Teknomorphs 3: Complications
by Cyblade Silver
Summary: Jake and the others discover a website that claims to be about the Yeerks; Darkon's brood continues to grow, and Gunnar wonders how to deal with these new developments.
1. Rebirth

****

Disclaimer: Welcome to the newest installment of my Teknomorphs series. As you might know already, Animorphs belongs to Scholastic, Teknoman to Saban, and Tekkaman Blade to Tatsunoko and SOTSU Agency. Thanks for reading!

Teknomorphs 3:

__

Complications

Deep underground, within the hidden Radam base, one of the teknopods was starting to shiver. The Teknoman within was awakening and swiftly growing impatient with being confined. At last the teknopods hardened outer membrane shattered, scattering the sticky fluids over the floor and dropping the newborn Teknoman onto the remains of the pod.

The Teknoman was leanly built, as befitted one of the Hunter types, and somewhat more elegantly constructed than the other Teknomen. But what one would notice first about this Teknoman was the fact that he, like Gunnar, did not posses the standard horned helmet that most Teknomen had. This ones helmet had smooth, curved, almost graceful lines.

Slowly, the new Teknoman raised his head for the first time and looked around at the base.

__

(Rapier.)

(what?)

(Greetings, Teknoman Rapier.)

(Teknoman Rapier? It that who I am? And who are you?)

(Yes, you are Teknoman Rapier. And I am Darkon. Your master.)

Rapier nodded, too tired and disoriented to say anything more. Falling limply back to the ground, Rapiers carmine eyes beneath his helmet slid shut. Meanwhile, another occupant of the Radams underground base was watching the birth with calm crimson eyes.

Gunnars thoughts, however, were far from as tranquil as his expression. _Raven. Or as much Raven Carter as Im Fritz Wallace, and maybe a lot less._ Gunnar knew that he was the only Teknoman who would remember anything about his life before Darkon had come along. He would have to get word to Ulysses, somehow, since that was what he had agreed to do.

Contacting him telepathically would have been outright suicidal, since Darkon would sense it. So Gunnar would have to go back to the cabin. And that meant that he would have to come up with some reason, some excuse that Darkon wouldnt think to question.

Gunnar sighed; hed have to think about this


	2. Greet the Dawn

Slade yawned, shifting on his bed of hay. Reaching over to grab one of the water bottles that had been hidden in the back of the hayloft, Slade twisted the cap off and drank about a third of the liquid. Slade looked over at the still sleeping form of Shara._ My sister, or so she says. Although, I do get the feeling shes telling the truth. I just dont know what to think anymore._

Slade stared for a few more seconds, considering his options. He wasnt particularly tired anymore, and laying on the hard floor of the hayloft was swiftly losing its appeal. Yawning and stretching, Slade considered his options. Flying was always nice, and Shara _did_ have that new Kite morph that shed been wanting to try out.

His loosely-laid plans were interrupted by the arrival of Tobias in through the open hayloft.

(Slade? Oh good, youre already awake,) Tobias said, perching in his usual spot in the barn rafters. (Listen; Jake found something really weird on the Web. Wake Shara up, then both of you guys have to morph into birds.)

__

(Why? Has something happened?) Slade asked worriedly.

(Jake found something really weird on the Net,) Tobias reiterated. (Were all going to meet up at Marcos house to check it out.)

Slade nodded, long used to the fact that it was Tobias responsibility to gather Jakes warriors when there was a mission being planned. Slade sometimes wondered why Jake hadnt either chosen a central base for the Animorphs to stay at or had one built for him, so that they would always be in the same place and so spare Tobias all the trouble of gathering them together.

Slade knew that Tobias often acted as an airborne observer and spy, so it wasnt as if Jake would deprive him of his purpose by moving the Animorphs to a central base. Slade often wondered why no one had thought to suggest it to him. Slade, would have done so himself, but it wasnt his place to bring such things up.

__

(Shara, Shara wake up,) Slade called telepathically, deciding not to bother with trying to speak loud enough to wake her. He knew from experience now that Shara was a very deep sleeper.

__

(Hmm? Ness is that you?) Shara moved, but didnt open her eyes.

__

(Shara Im Slade, remember?)

(Huh?) Sharas eyes fluttered, then opened entirely. "Sorry, I guess I forgot again," Shara said, rubbing her eyes.

Slade put aside Sharas strange morning mannerisms, the same way he had ever since the girl who might have been his sister had joined the Animorphs. They were not what was important right now, the important thing was to obey Jakes orders and come to the meeting at Marcos house. Wherever that was.

Standing up, Slade helped Shara to her feet. Then he focused on one of the many nonhuman DNA patterns that were stored somewhere inside his body. And somehow, through some process that Slade was sure he would never really be able to understand, he began to shapeshift. It was still a very odd feeling; that of having his body be so drastically reshaped, but once it was done and he was a raven again, Slade forgot about it.

Shara, too, had just finished morphing into one of her bird forms. And a Swallow-tailed Kite stood next to the raven. Once Slade noticed that his sister was finished, he led her off the edge of the hayloft and they both took wing.

XXX

Once the two of them were in the air, Shara and Slade dropped in behind Tobias. The two of them were far enough away from the barn, so Shara decided that it was time to get some more information from Tobias.

(So, what was this weird thing that Jake found on the web?)

(Its a webpage about the Yeerks, if youll believe that,) Tobias said, the tone of his voice betraying the fact that he didnt believe in it much, himself.

(Really?) Shara asked. (That _is_ kind of strange. But, it could just be a coincidence. Or someone playing a joke.)

(Thats a possibility,) Tobias allowed. (But, theres also the possibility that this site is actually legitimate.)

(So, were going over to Jakes house to check this out?) Shara asked.

(No, were going over to Marcos,) Tobias said.

(Oh. Why are we doing that?)

(Because Marco has a better computer than Jake does,) Tobias said. (And Marco also knows his way around computers a lot better than Jake does.)

(Oh, that makes sense,) Shara said.

Slade, personally, wasnt very concerned about why they were going to Marcos house instead of Jakes, since Jake had probably been the one to order it in the first place.

(About when will we get there?) Shara asked.

(In just a few more minutes.)

As he said this, Tobias finally caught sight of Marcos house. It wouldnt be long before they got there.

(Were about ten minutes from Marcos house now, guys. Get ready to dive when I tell you to,) Tobias said.

(Well be ready,) Shara said.

Slade didnt say anything, but he prepared himself all the same. Tobias gave the order, and all three of them folded their wings and dropped out of the sky at the same time. The window had been opened for them, and all three birds were soon inside the house with the rest of the Animorphs.


	3. Potential Trouble

"Good to see you guys made it here so quickly," Jake said, as Slade, Tobias and Shara landed on the carpet and started to change.

For the two siblings it was demorphing, but for Tobias it was actually morphing, since his normal form was now that of a Red-Tailed Hawk. As soon as the three of them were fully human again, they walked over to where the other Animorphs were waiting.

"So, what have you managed to find out?" Shara asked, leaning on the side of Marcos chair and looking over his shoulder.

"Not all that much, since weve been waiting for you three to show up," Marco said, turning back to his computer screen. "I still think that this could all be some kind of mix-up, though. I mean, who would make a webpage about the Yeerks? Who even could?"

"We all know what the Yeerks do to people who find out about them," Cassie said reasonably. "So how could this be anything else but a trap?"

"Im not sure, but if the Yeerks _are_ trying to trap people into looking for them and then infest them, were going to have to stop them," Jake said firmly.

"Why is it working so slowly? Sllllloooowww llleee. Lee. Slow-lee?"

"Look, Space-boy," Marco said, incensed. "This is the fastest modem around. It gets fifty-thousand bits per second. It may not be up to your high-and-mighty Andalite standards, but here on Earth this is cutting-edge technology."

"Only fifty-_thousand_?" Ax echoed derisively. "Not millions, at least?"

Shara, tuning out the argument, and the weird sounds that Ax was making with his mouth, watched as the page continued to load. She tried to push the thoughts of the old computer back at what had been her house out of her mind with some success. Now wasnt the time to be indulging in nostalgia; sometimes she wished she could have forgotten everything the way Ness seemed to.

But then, she couldnt very well take her revenge if she didnt know just what she was taking it for.

So it was best that she kept her memories, even if they did hurt sometimes. When the page had finished loading, she scanned it quickly. It seemed like an ordinary webpage. She didnt really see what the others were getting so worked up about; right up until she caught sight of the title of the page: Information on the Yeerk Invasion.

It was interesting enough to take her mind off the things she didnt want to think about right now, and for that she was grateful. It was also potentially very dangerous; the Yeerks could be using this to bait the people who knew about them into revealing themselves. It was best to be suspicious of everything.

Especially when it looked this good.

"So lets see this famous web page," Tobias said, obviously referring to more than just the front page that they were on. "I have to get home soon. Theres some guy trying to move in on my meadow; I have to be there to keep up my claim."

Not for the first time, Shara was struck by how weirdly similar her situation and Slades, of course was to Tobias. Neither of them was quite human anymore, and they both had to deal with things that no human would ever have to deal with. Even the other Animorphs didnt have to confront the kinds of things she, Tobias, and Slade had to confront almost daily.

"Its another red-tail, right?" Cassie asked, giving Shara the impression that the two of them had discussed Tobias situation before.

"Yes," he said, jerking his head at her in a particularly birdlike fashion. "And hes really tough."

"Okay, here it is," Jake said, indicating the site that was loading on the screen.

__

This page is devoted to letting the world know about the Yeerk threat! This is not a joke! This is not the usual Internet nonsense. This is serious. Deadly serious.

The heading of the page was written in Impact font, with a large, bold typeface and colored red. The international color for danger. Whoever had put the page together certainly knew how to get peoples attention, now the only issue remaining was whether or not this particular resistance effort was legitimate.

It could very easily have been an effort by the Yeerks to trap anyone who knew about them, just like Cassie had pointed out.

"See?" Jake said, looking over at Cassie. "Yeerks. A Web page about Yeerks. Can you believe this?"

"No. Its just too bizarre."

"I agree," Shara said, folding her arms over her chest. "Its just too good to be true. There has to be some kind of catch. Some trap we havent spotted yet."

"Listen to the woman, Jake," Marco said, giving his old friend a sidelong smirk. "Shes starting to sound like me, and we all know _Im_ always right," he chuckled, then became serious. "You _have_ disabled your cookies, right?"

"His cookies?" Cassie demanded, incredulous. "Disabled _cookies_? Excuse me?"

"You should really think about joining up with _this_ century, Cassie," Marco said, rolling his eyes. "A cookie is a Web browser tag that can give a website information about you. Well, not _you_ you, but your screen name at least."

"They _can_ be used to store passwords and other data so you dont have to sign in all the time, but they mostly seem to be used to target advertising. Which I think is really annoying."

"I disabled it," Jake said, winking at Cassie, before turning to glance at Shara.

Shara, for her part, rolled her eyes and turned her attention back to the computer screen.

"Disabled cookies," Cassie said, with a derisive snort. "Computer geeks have this obsessive need to give everything they make a stupid name. All they want to do is make-"

Cassie trailed off when she noticed Shara laughing at her. "Well, dont be shy, Cassie," the other girl said, struggling to control her mirth. "Tell us how you really feel."

"So, what did you look at, Jake?" Marco asked, shooting a smirk back at Shara which the blonde acknowledged with a laugh and a disdainful, pitying look at Cassie, which was duly ignored.


	4. Seeing Things

"Well, I looked at Types of Yeerks. Theres a drawing of something that looks kind of like a Hork-Bajir. But there are two other drawings that dont look like anything weve ever seen."

Clicking on the link, Jake waited for the images to appear as Marcos computer worked to load them.

"Not bad," Rachel commented when it did.

"Obviously, whoever drew that had at least a pretty good idea of what a Hork-Bajir actually looks like. Even if some of the details _are_ a bit off."

"Thats a hopeful development," Shara said, beginning to become somewhat cautiously optimistic. "What do you think the others might be?"

"I think the others might be from someone watching too much TV," Marco said, laughing in derision. "Hey Ax, have you ever seen any real aliens that look like those things?"

"Like those ones, I have," the morphed Andalite said, pointing to the _Close Encounters_ alien. "It is very similar to the mature phase of a species called Skrit Na. The Skrit, the immature phase, is like a giant cockroach. This could easily be a Na. Only Na walk on all fours like sensible creatures. Cuh-reee-chers. My brother Elfangor once had some big adventure involving Skrit Na, but he would never tell me much about it. None of the other species are familiar to me."

"Do you think the Radam would know about any of these aliens?" Jake asked, shooting a glance at the two Teknomen looking at the screen.

"I dont know," Shara admitted. "They might have, but neither of us know much more about them than you do."

"So. What does this tell us?" Rachel asked, bringing their attention back to the matter at hand.

"The accurate Hork-Bajir picture could be a coincidence," Marco put in. "Or maybe its a mix or real information and bogus information. Or maybe someone out there knows more about the Yeerks and the various species theyve conquered than Ax does."

"A mix of truth and lies, or else a coincidence," Cassie said, nodding in agreement.

"A mix of truth and lies is like the working definition of the Internet," Rachel said, with a soft chuckle. "Equal parts reality and delusion."

"Well, were going to have to find a way to separate the truth from the lies if we ever want to find out the motivation behind this website. It could very well be a trap," Shara mused aloud.

Marco gave her an approving nod, but as her attention was focused inward, Shara didnt notice it.

"Its the same thing in the facts about Yeerks, and the section about Human-Controllers. Not that theyve used the term Controllers," Jake explained. "Some of whats here may be true, but I think most of it is bull. I mean, theyre saying that every politician in the country is a Controller. If that were true, than the Yeerks would have already won."

Clicking on the list of suspected Human-Controllers, Jake moved away so they could get a closer look at it.

"The President," Cassie read, scoffing. "Yeah, right. The Vice President. Speaker of the House. Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Good grief; Ive heard of healthy suspicion, but this is ridiculous."

"Hey, wait," Marco said, studying the list more intently. "John Tesh is listed here. That I can believe. Snoop Dogg? I dont think so. The Spice Girls? They suck, but I dont know if any of them are Controllers."

"This is stupid," Rachel scoffed. "Its a complete waste of time. Some typical Internet wacko picked the word Yeerk out of thin air and decided to make a Web page. This means nothing."

"That was my first reaction, too," Jake admitted. "Then I saw this name," he said, rolling the mouses cursor to point at a certain name that he had seen.

"Chapman!" Rachel exclaimed. "Thats interesting."

"Vice Principal Chapman," Shara echoed thoughtfully. "Cassie told me about him. She says hes supposed to be pretty high up in the Yeerks command structure."

"He is," Jake said. "Hes one of The Sharings major supervisors, and he reports directly to Visser Three," Jake paused for a moment as a thought struck him. "If whoever put this page together actually knows anything about Yeerks, I wonder why they didnt mention The Sharing?"

"Good question," Cassie said, nodding. "Maybe they dont know anything about The Sharing."

"Or maybe this whole thing is nothing but one big Yeerk trap," Tobias said, cocking his head in his usual, birdlike manner.

"Then why would they mention Chapman?" Shara asked reasonably.

"Its a pretty common name," Marco pointed out. "It _could_ be completely random. A coincidence."

Jake pushed Marcos chair back from his computer, turning to face his friends head-on. "If what were seeing here _is_ real, then maybe we have more allies out there who could help us."

"But, if this whole thing turns out to be a trap, then we could be the mice, and this stupid Web page of theirs could be the cheese," Rachel countered.

All of the Animorphs, save for Slade who had no real opinion on the matter as usual, turned to look askance at one another. They shrugged, not really certain what to do.

"What about the chat room?" Cassie asked, after about half a minute of dead silence.

"Theres supposedly a scheduled chat starting right about now," Jake said thoughtfully. "But, I wasnt sure if it was safe for one of us to go there. A chat room goes pretty far beyond just disabling cookies. I mean, how secure _are_ screen names?"

"A lot more secure after I get done," Marco said with a grin. "See, I have the access codes for the system at my dads work. So, I can hack in through-"

"Excuse me, Prince Jake," Ax interrupted; Marco shot him a look of mild annoyance. "But, if you would like, I can encode Marcos software in a way that will make it impossible for anyone to trace you. Why is it called software?"


	5. Cloak and dagger

Everyone present ignored that question. Even Marco, who was proud of the skills that he had worked so hard to gain, knew that his Andalite teammate was more well-versed in computer operating than he was ever likely to be.

"There is only so much that I can do with this primitive system," Ax groused. "Two-dimensional screen, an actual keyboard instead of a decent psychic interface, rigid codes Im not an archaeologist. I dont know much about the workings of ancient technology"

With his annoyed grumbling providing a counterpoint to his actions, Ax worked out a code that would protect Marcos computer from any outside invasion. It took him three minutes.

"Okay. So, do we chat about Yeerks?" Cassie asked.

"Yep," Jake said. "We chat about Yeerks."

With that permission given, Marco signed into the chatroom, and all eight of the Animorphs watched as a strange, disjointed conversation played out in front of them. Right away, Shara took note of something odd about the chatroom itself.

"Why is everyone limited to just ten words? All of the chats Ive been on have at _least _let you get a full sentence out," she said, folding her arms and raising an eyebrow.

"I think it might be using old software or something," Marco said with a shrug. "Or maybe its some kind of bug."

As they continued to watch the strange, fragmented conversations play out on the small screen in front of them, some things began to become clear.

"The Sharing," Jake muttered, having caught the reference to the Yeerks front-group in the conversation between two particularly enthusiastic chatroom goers. "Interesting. See if anyone stomps on that."

Someone did.

"Thats not a hopeful sign," Shara said, folding her arms and looking over the exchange.

"That Chazz guy seems fairly serious, though," Tobias pointed out.

"Yeah, but YrkH8er might be a Controller himself," Jake said, his eyes riveted on the same words as Sharas had been.

"Or, he could just be mistaken," Cassie said. "We of all people should know how obsessive the Yeerks are about their security. Remember how _we_ all thought that The Sharing was innocent fun at first."

"_You_ didnt," Jake pointed out.

"It seems like Meg and Carlito might know something," Marco said, bringing the thread of the conversation back on track.

"Gump is sad," Cassie said, sounding sympathetic. "Hes worried about his father."

"Any normal person would be," Shara said, with a soft sigh.

"Yeah, well its a sad world all around," Marco said harshly, then yelped as Shara slapped him on the shoulder.

"Marco, dont be a jerk."

"Ow," the boy in question responded glumly.

"So, what do we think?" Jake asked, sweeping his gaze over the other Animorphs.

"Who can tell?" Rachel sighed. "Maybe some of these people are real, but maybe this is all some kind of Yeerk scam set up to lure people in."

"People like Gump," Cassie said, taking a breath and blowing it out harshly. "They may be trying to get him to tell them his name and address so that they can warn his father about them. Probably make him into a Controller, too."

"I suspect its some kind of Yeerk scam."

"Yeah, so do I," Rachel concurred.

"Its possible," Shara allowed. "Still, this might just be some people, like us, whove found out about the invasion well, one of them, anyway and are trying to do what they can about it."

"I agree," Cassie said, nodding. "Theres something real about most of these people. Something genuine. Not all of them, I admit. YrkH8er is most likely a Controller himself. But Gump is genuinely worried about his father. Id bet on it."

"I would, too," Shara said.

"I got that impression, myself," Jake said. "Ax, what do you think?"

"Who can tell?" the Andalite asked rhetorically. "This primitive means of communication makes it impossible to discern tonal inflections, or any other vocal cues. Now that you humans have the telephone, why does anyone still use _this_ system?"

"Actually, the phone was invented before the computer," Jake said, his mind not particularly focused on the conversation. "This system is actually the most modern."

"Humans," Ax said with a laugh. "You invent the book first, _then_ the computer. Puter. Telephone before computer. Very backward."

__

Wonder what hed think of the printing press, Shara mused idly, before turning her attention back to the issue at hand.

"Marco, what do you think about all this?" Jake asked.

"If I had to guess, Id say its a little bit of both," Marco said, tilting his head back and forth in a gesture of uncertainty. "Maybe this Web page was created by Yeerks to help them locate any humans who know about them. But at the same time, maybe it got a little out of their control. I mean, it sort of sounds like Chazz, Carlito, Fitey, and Meg are all for real."

"Shara?" Jake asked, "Any thoughts?"

"I agree with Marco on this," she paused to think for a moment. "Still, we shouldnt rush into this blindly, either. Well need more information."

"We need to try to find out who these people are," Jake concurred, nodding. "Ax? Can you try hacking in to find the protected screen name files?"

Standing up, Jake allowed Ax to settle down into the seat hed just vacated. The morphed Andalite seemed a bit ill-at-ease, but that was only to be expected. Andalites werent built for sitting, after all.

"What is Caps Lock?" Ax asked.

"A way for trolls to shout at you over the internet," Shara said, recalling a few of the more annoying chat sessions shed participated in.

"Trolls?"

"Nevermind that," Jake said quickly, not wanting the meeting to go on for too long. "Its not important."

"Yes, Prince Jake."

"Im not a prince," Jake sighed, having lost count of how many times hed said that very thing.

Watching as Ax began to type, Jake could see him becoming increasingly frustrated over the course of just a few minutes.

"Whats the matter?" Marco needled. "A superior Andalite cant hack into the Web Access America mainframe?"

"Can you?" Ax asked, turning to look at him.

"Well, no."

Shara swallowed a chortle. _Whos insulting who now, I wonder?_


	6. Discernment

With a noncommittal grunt, Ax returned to his work at the computer. Then, sighing almost explosively in frustration, he shoved the keyboard away. "The most basic systems are not useable."

"In other words, you cant do it?" Jake asked.

"No," the morphed Andalite shook his head. "Both this machine and the central computer itself are too primitive for my methods to work. I _did_ try to reconfigure the software, but it was not enough," he seemed to perk up. "However, I fixed it so that Marco will now be able to win any online game he plays."

"I _already_ win every online game I play," Marco pointed out, with some degree of self-satisfaction.

"Your win and lose ratio is stored in the computer, Marco," Ax pointed out. "You do _not_ win every game. You win forty percent of the time. Ratio," the Andalite repeated, as if making up for lost time. "Horatio. Ray. Shee. Oh."

"It _would_ be nice to know if these guys are for real," Cassie pointed out. "We may have some more allies out there. And, there may also be people like Gump, who we can help."

"So?" Jake said, holding his hands out plaintively. "How do we get the real names behind the screen names?"

"If we busted into WAAs main office" Marco trailed off, a pensive look on his face.

"What?" Shara asked, turning a mildly incredulous stare on Marco.

"_Invade_ Web Access America?" Rachel, however, looked more accepting.

"Yeah," Marco seemed more confident for the time hed had to think. "Invade Web Access America. Bust into their main headquarters, hack their computers, and get the screen names. And, while were at it, lets make sure we turn off that stupid program that keeps offering you a Web Access America Visa card."

"Well, I cant say I have anything against _that_," Shara said, chuckling. "Still, how are we going to manage all of that?"

"Thats what we have to think about," Jake said, bringing all eyes back to him. "How were going to get to WAA headquarters, and what were going to have to do when we _do_ get there. Marco?"

"Yeah?" the aforementioned boy responded, turning around.

"Im going to need you to find WAAs headquarters, and to figure out what would be the best way for all of us to get there," Jake said. "Cassie, Im going to need one of you contact the Chee after Marco gives us the information about WAA. Depending on how long this is going to take, we might need them to cover for us," wincing, he looked at Tobias, Slade, Ax and Shara. "_Some_ of us will, at least."

"All right," Cassie said, nodding. "Ill see if I can get in contact with Erek."

"And _Ill _see what I can find out about Web Access America so we can _access_ their main computer system."

There was a chorus of groans and eyerolls from the four original members of the Animorphs. Ax and Slade didnt react, but Shara actually chuckled.

"What?" she asked, seeing the looks directed at her. "That pun was so bad it was actually funny."

"I dont know whether to take that as a compliment or an insult," Marco said, giving Shara a fish-eyed look.

"Take it in the spirit it was intended," Shara said, smiling cryptically.

"All right, enough you two," Jake said. "It might not be an issue for you, but some of us here have time limits to worry about. Now, well meet back here when Marco has the rest of the information we need."

"Well, if thats all, I think we should all get back home," Cassie said. "Ive got chores to do. And homework, of course."

"Yeah," Jake said, nodding. "I know what you mean. I have homework, myself."

"Then I suggest that you all get out of here," Marco said, grinning. "My Dads going to be home soon, and I dont want to explain to him why my room looks like a cut-rate superhero convention."

Shara chuckled, shaking her head, even as she and almost all of the rest of the Animorphs started morphing back into birds. It was the fastest and easiest way to get back to all of their respective homes, not to mention the fact that very few people could track a bird in flight. Jake was the only one who stayed unmorphed, and thus stayed behind, playing the part of the visiting friend for Marcos father.

It wasnt entirely an act, of course, but the reasons behind the visit _had_ been fabricated.

XXX

As she made her way back to what passed for home, Shara found herself wondering just what they would find once they reached the Web Access America building. They seemed to know a lot about the Yeerks well, some of them did; some of them were clearly just trying to get into what they saw as another Internet clique but none of them seemed to know anything about the Radam. She might tell them, that is, if this whole thing didnt turn out to be a wild goose chase of one sort or another.

Or, worse yet, a trap.

Once the three of them had reached the barn, and her and Slade had started to demorph, Shara let herself relax a bit. She had at least a few hours if not a full day before they were likely to start making any real plans. It was still a Thursday, after all.

Missions like this one always seemed to be planned on weekends; the other Animorphs still had to deal with school, along with all the other trappings of a normal life that she and Slade had left far behind. Sometimes she thought that the others envied her and her brother Marco did, at least for the fact that neither of them had to go to school anymore.

All of them, that is, except for Cassie.

She was the only one who understood that, what the others thought was some kind of a blessing in disguise, was more of a burden than anything. The only one who seemed to _want_ to understand that Shara would have given up all of the exotic powers, the inhuman strength, and the now-copious amounts of free time, just to have a brother who honestly remembered her and a family who didnt want her dead. That fit with what she now knew about the other girl, and Shara was glad to have someone like that on their side.

When they all reached the barn again at last, flying in through the hay-loft window and alighting on the floor, for her and Slade, and the floor of the barn itself for Cassie, Shara gratefully began her demorph. It was good to be back in her own body, and it would be even better to get some food and a bit of sleep. This she called down to Cassie, using her telepathy so she wouldnt risk their secrecy with excessive amounts of noise.

When she nodded, then turn to leave, Shara turned her attention to her brother.

Slade, however, looked like he was just about to fall asleep. So, settling down next to him, Shara leaned back against the wall and waited for Cassie.


	7. Planning Stage

When school had ended on Friday afternoon she knew what day of the week it was from her habit of asking Cassie when she inevitably lost track of time Shara looked down into the main area of the barn and saw the other Animorphs making their way inside. At least, the ones whod been at school in the first place were. Tobias had just flown in through the window, and she turned to wave at him, wondering all the while if Ax would be showing up soon.

(Hey, Shara,) the hawk said, dipping a wing to her even as he canceled his momentum in order to perch on the high rafters of the barn.

"Hey, Tobias," she greeted, waving back.

Clambering down the ladder, with Slade not far behind, she quickly joined up with her fellow Animorphs.

"Marcos found something we can use," Jake said, nodding to her and Slade as they took their seats on a nearby hay-bale.

"Right," the other boy said, drawing the attention of all of the Animorphs. "The good news is, I know the location the Web Access America headquarters. The bad news is, its not anywhere nearby; not even close enough for us to get to in morph without being trapped. But, I _have_ found a way for us to get there."

"How?" Shara asked, turning to fix Marco with a curious stare; while it _was_ true that there were other ways for them to get where they were all trying to go, those ways might risk compromising the anonymity that most of the Animorphs relied upon to keep themselves safe.

"Well, theres a lot of planes going out that way," he said.

"You think we should try to catch a ride on a plane?" she asked, raising a disbelieving eyebrow. "Wouldnt that be too much of a risk for the secrecy that you seem to want us to maintain?"

"Since when did I say that we were going to try to catch the plane as humans?" Marco asked, cocking his head.

"Youre suggesting we go in morph, then? That makes sense," Shara said, nodding. "Which one?"

"Flies," Marco said calmly.

"And, what about those of us who dont _have_ fly morphs, hmm?" she asked, tilting her head slightly; no one ever really seemed to think of her and Slade when they were making all these big plans.

It was kind of troublesome, and all the more so since she didnt really want to think of it that way. She was annoyed with them, sometimes, and other times she was annoyed that she became annoyed by things like that.

"Cmon," Marco smirked, obviously trying to be cajoling. "With all of the animal poop in here, you guysll have your very own fly morphs before you know it."

"Marcos actually right, for once," Rachel said, as the boy in question stuck his tongue out at her. "This place is pretty much Grand Central Station, as far as flies are concerned. You two shouldnt have a problem getting the right morphs for this job."

"I think I might even be able to find a cockroach that the two of you can acquire," Cassie said, smiling.

"Good," Slade said calmly.

"Kind of gross to think about, but at least we wont be stuck behind on the next mission just because we dont have the right morph," she said, making herself more comfortable on the hay-bale where she sat.

(I have to pick up a fly morph, too,) Tobias said, sounding like he was speaking for his own benefit rather than anyone elses.

"You could use a roach, too, couldnt you?" Shara asked, tilting her head slightly in the hawks direction.

(No. I acquired one of those awhile ago,) Tobias gave a shudder of distaste; a remarkably human reaction. (Its incredibly gross when I have to use it, but Im still glad I have it. Sort of, anyway.)

Shara laughed; that was pretty much what she had been thinking. Bugs, on the whole, were gross. Still, it wasnt like she couldnt see the advantages inherent in being so small. It would make it harder for their respective enemies to find them, at least.

Also, there was the fact that being in morph seemed to blunt the sense she always had of Darkon, so that was another good reason to acquire as many as she could. It also seemed to work the same way for the sense she had of where Slade was at any given moment; she didnt know quite how to react to that fact. On the one hand, the sense the had of Slade was obviously related to the one that she had of Darkons whereabouts, so in that way it was skin-crawlingly creepy to have it at times.

On the other, of course, was the fact that she didnt like to lose track of her brother; Slade had been through a lot more than she had at the hands of the Radam, even though he didnt remember any of it.

"So, after we all get up to snuff as far as morphs are concerned, when will we leave on this mission of ours?" she asked.

"Tomorrow," Jake said, as all of the others nodded. "The rest of us will need to have enough time off from school to carry this out."

"Makes sense," she said, leaning back on her hands and crossing her legs at the ankles; she honestly couldnt believe she was even thinking it, but she was starting to miss school.

Or not school, per se, so much as the normality that it and everything like it represented; normality seemed to be in short supply, lately.

"All right," Marco said, rubbing his hands together with overblown enthusiasm. "Now that weve covered just _exactly_ how were all going to try and get ourselves killed this Saturday, lets all get home and get lots of sleep. We wouldnt want to die tired, after all," he continued with a wink.

Snatching a dirt-clod up off the floor, Shara pitched it at the back of Marcos head with a gentle, under-hand throw that would see it splattered all over the boys hair without actually hurting him.

XXX

"Hey!" Marco exclaimed, and Jake saw Rachel give Shara an approving look.

"All right," he said, before any more shenanigans could be instigated. "Lets all get home. Like Marco said, tomorrow is going to be a busy day for all of us."

"Sure, take _her_ side," Marco muttered, but he was smirking and starting to morph as he said it, so Jake didnt take his grumbling seriously.

Once he and the others the ones who werent living in Cassies barn, at least had all finished their transition into their bird forms, Jake joined them in their running take-offs. He knew that there would be plenty for them all to do, once this day was over and the time for their mission had come, but he also knew that if he thought about it too much, he would begin to think of all the things that could go wrong.

All the ways that he could make the wrong decision, and then have something terrible happen to one of the others. Even Slade and Shara, as powerful as they were, could suffer for his mistakes. He didnt want any of his friends his people to suffer, but he also knew the dangers of paranoia.

This was meant to be a simple information-gathering outing; to see if they really did have allies against the Yeerks, allies who they would have to tell about the Radam, or if they were sniffing at the edges of a clever trap.


	8. Nobody's Advantage

Anything was possible, and it was his job to see those possibilities, calculate them, and then to act on them so that the Yeerks and the Radam could both be stopped. The action was just as important as the calculation; often moreso, since the invasions couldnt be stopped by thoughts alone, no matter what anyone else might think. The eight of them were the only real hope Earth had.

XXX

When they all began to meet up the next morning at the barn, Jake noticed that Cassie was getting some normal clothes ready for them all. Shara was helping her pack, and Rachel was just packing away what looked like an extra pair.

"Good to see you here on time, Jake," Rachel said, as she finished zipping up the bag.

(Why are you packing all of _that_?) he asked, even as he started demorphing. (Were not going to be able to carry it all the way to the airport, and even if we could, itd be too conspicuous.)

"This isnt _for_ the airport," Rachel said, already heading over to the wall of the barn farthest from the door.

"Rachel always likes to have a spare outfit or two in the barn," Cassie said, with a wry sort of smile. "Now, I guess she figures that Slade and Shara should have the same kind of thing."

"_No one_ should be forced to wear hand-me-downs," Rachel said with a theatrical shudder, coming over to stand with the two of them. "Especially _Cassies _hand-me-downs."

"I have the vague feeling I should be offended by that," Cassie said, giving Rachel a sidelong look.

"Ignore it," Rachel said with a grin. "Itll pass."

(All clear,) Tobias said, and Jake could hear him flapping his way into the barn and then landing on one of the roof beams. (You two can come out now.)

Jake could see Shara climbing down the ladder, and then Slades upper-body as he looked over the edge at her. Jake didnt know what was going through the older boys head at that moment, but he leaped right out of the hayloft; landing in a crouch at the base of the ladder. He helped Shara down, and the two of them made their way over to the group of them.

"So, whatre we going to do now?" Slade asked, turning to him.

"We have to wait for Marco," he said, just as he began to hear the flapping of wings. "Then well all move out."

Watching as Marco folded his wings and swooped over one of the hay-bales, the one he usually sat on in fact Jake watched as Marco demorphed and stood up. The other boy stretched a bit, looking around at the other Animorphs, then smirked at Jake.

"So, fearless leader, we all ready to move out?"

"Fearless Leader is very busy with plans to capture Moose and Squirrel," Shara said, with one of the goofiest fake Russian accents hed ever heard. "Am afraid you will have to get along without him."

Marco burst out laughing. "Okay, Shara, I forgive you _entirely_ for the whole dirt-clod thing yesterday," he said, grinning at her.

"Lets get underway," he said, not wanting to waste anymore time if he could help it.

"Yes, Jake," Slade said, and the others simply nodded their agreement before they all spread out and began to morph.

Soon, he stood among a small flock of seagulls in his own seagull morph. This was really the best way to go flying through the city and not be noticed by any of the Controllers there while they all made their way to the airport. There wasnt much that he could do for Tobias, aside from suggesting that the hawk acquire a gull morph of his own.

Hed done that once; Tobias hadnt been particularly keen on the idea.

(All right,) Tobias said, with a mockingly put-upon tone. (Ill try to get you guys to the airport without passing over _too_ many Dumpsters in the process. Just try not to head for the city dump.)

(Very funny, Tobias,) Shara said tolerantly.

They were soon underway, fighting their seagull brains as they all began to notice the little eddies and piles of trash scattered in smaller or larger deposits throughout the city. Keeping a good amount of distance from Tobias so that no bird watcher, or Controller, would be able to connect the small flock of seagulls with the Red-Tailed Hawk above and in front of them while still being careful to stay within the range of their thought-speak was difficult enough that it took up most of their attention. A good thing, that, since it kept them from noticing the trash all that much.

Soon enough, they had all made it to the airport without much more than a bit of minor, food-related annoyance from their various seagull morphs. Tobias lead them to the bushes where he had concealed the clothes and shoes they would be wearing over their morphing outfits so they didnt stick out too much at the airport. And, after Tobias reported that there werent any people around to bother them or take notice of what they were all going to be doing, and that there was no one close to their hiding place, the seven of them began demorphing.

Slade, Shara, and Cassie were the fastest, but Slades demorph was just as much of a horror show as any of the others. He didnt waste too much time thinking about that there were more important things on his mind today but it was mildly interesting. Once the last of them had gotten their shoes on, and Tobias had given them one last all clear, they trooped out of the bushes and made their way into the airport itself.

So far, it looked like the transit phase of this mission was well in hand.

XXX

She hadnt really, truly _appreciated _how much her sense of hearing had been enhanced in comparison to your average, baseline human until this moment. Until she was standing in a sea of noise, wanting more than anything for it to all _shut up_. She had also been able to ignore, for the most part, how differently she _thought_ from a normal human up to this point, but now the idea of slaughtering every living thing, human and non-, in the room she now stood in was starting to seem less repugnant with every word that someone _anyone_ said.

Slade seemed to be having a worse time of it than her, of course; there was so much less for him to cling to, to keep himself from falling into the habits and mental patterns of one of the Radams slave warriors.

Deciding that they could both use a nap, to avoid killing everyone sharing the terminal with them, and probably bringing something even _they_ couldnt handle down on all their heads, Shara took hold of her brothers right arm and lead him over to a double-row of seats. When they had both made themselves as comfortable as possible, not an easy thing when you were dealing with both a pronounced sensory overload and homicidal urges that would tax the self-control of a Buddhist monk, she told him in no uncertain terms that they were both going to be taking a nap.

As used to taking orders as he was, Slade agreed without another word.

XXX

When hed seen how much trouble Slade and Shara were having with the noise in the terminal though it mostly seemed to be Shara who looked like she was _troubled_; Slade just looked annoyed Jake had been about to take them aside. He didnt know quite what he would have done after that, but Sharas order to Slade that they were both going to take a nap on the terminal seats nearest their group precluded the need for him to do anything more. He was glad for that, since there werent a lot of things that he could think of that wouldnt have ended up drawing attention to all of them.

"Its a one-hour-and-thirty-minute flight," Marco reported, having gone to check the notice board about half a minute ago. "Plenty of time."

"Right," he said, turning to glance over at Slade and Shara; they looked all right, but given how badly theyd both been affected by the noise-levels in the terminal, he wasnt willing to take it for granted that they would be able to handle it.

Another thing he should have thought of before; he really needed to try to get a handle on just what kind of powers the siblings had, so he knew what would be more likely to affect them when they were out on missions as themselves.

"All we have to do is morph, fly aboard the plane, try not to get swatted, and demorph when we get there," Marco continued, without prompting. "We can take United or Northwest."

Staring out the window at the planes taking off and landing, Jake turned to shoot another glance back at the sleeping siblings. Neither of them looked particularly comfortable, and he couldnt help the feeling that he should have been able to do something about that. Maybe even told them that they could sit this mission out; something to help with the discomfort that they were both obviously dealing with.

"United or Northwest, Jake?" Marco asked, derailing his train of thought before it could really go anywhere.

"Flip a coin," he said. "Who really cares? The problem _I_ have with the idea is being a fly on a plane. There are a lot of people in there; thats a lot of ways to get swatted. And, if anything _does_ go wrong, how are we going to be able to demorph on a plane?"

"You want to back out?" Marco sounded concerned.

Looking back out at the runway, where a 747 was ponderously rolling out of the terminal, gathering speed for takeoff, he considered his next words. "Nah. I guess things will work out. This is a risk, but the outcome is worth it."

Marcos answering smile was a genuine one, no trace of mockery; a rare sight in his case. "I remember back when you didnt _want_ to be the one calling the shots on these missions of ours."

"I still dont," he said, feeling a bit resigned. "But someone has to, or else nothing ever gets done. Right?"

"Yeah," Marco said, with a nod.

"I just want to go back to a life where I dont have to make decisions that might end up getting people killed, you know?"

"Do you?" Marcos smile was definitely of the mocking variety now. "You really think that we can all go back to being regular kids someday? Even overlooking Slade and Shara, you think that _you_ can go back to being Joe Average Student after having been the leader of the Animorphs?"

"Yes, I do," he said, putting all of the conviction he felt into his voice; he had to believe that, he _did_ believe it.

"Of course," Marco said dryly. "Come on, lets round up the others. And, the United flight leaves before the Northwest, so thats the one we should take. We have fifteen minutes to catch it; it leaves from Gate nineteen."


	9. Departure Time

"Is there a movie on the flight?" he asked, deliberately trying to echo Marcos casual tone.

"On a one-hour-and-thirty-minute flight? Itd have to be more like an in-flight cartoon."

With the obvious exception of Slade and Shara, the other Animorphs were spread throughout the terminal. This was to deter anyone any Controller who might have been watching them from starting to see them as a group. It was important that nothing about them seemed out of place; they couldnt afford to be discovered.

Waking up the siblings and gathering the others, Jake and Marco explained the plan that they had come up with. It was Tobias who found the flaw that none of the others had thought to point out.

"How are we going to find Gate nineteen when were in fly morph? How good are fly eyes?"

"Pretty bad, actually," Jake admitted. "Theyre compound eyes."

"Their sense of smell is good, though," Marco pointed out. "I mean, a fly can sense poop or garbage from a long way off."

Jake shared a Look with Marco.

"Oh, youre _not_ serious," Marco said, getting the implications loud and clear. "Where would we find it? And what would we even do with it? Hand it over to the flight attendant? Tell him Hang onto this for us, well be right back as flies?"

There was a large crowd of people disembarking from a plane as Marco and Jake were having their low-voiced conversation. They werent speaking in whispers, since a whisper would have drawn more attention than it was worth, they had learned. All of the passengers seemed extremely grateful to be getting off the plane, even those who werent meeting anyone at the terminal, and some of them looked like theyd fallen asleep with their faces pressed against the windows of the plane.

Then, almost at the rear of the group of departing passengers, a small family with a baby appeared. They stopped just a few feet from the loosely gathered Animorphs.

"He needs to be changed," the mother said, sounding like she wasnt particularly enthused by the whole idea; no one who understood the situation could blame her.

"Whose turn is it?" the father asked, sounding about as enthusiastic as his wife. When the mother handed her baby over to him, he groaned. "Please let it just be number one."

"I dont think so, Tim," the mother said sardonically. "I think youre getting a full load."

Turning back to the rest of the group, Jake shuddered in distaste; there were times he really hated this job. "Okay, we need a volunteer for a very hazardous and disgusting mission. Someone has to get that diaper."

"Include me out," Shara said. "There are some things I just wont do for the cause." There was a wry smile on her face, but Jake didnt doubt her sincerity for a minute.

"I dont think this is a good mission for a girl, anyway," Marco said. "No offense, but if one of you three reached into that trashcan, people would be bound to notice. With a guy, theyll probably just figure it was a dare or something."

"For once, Marco, Im not going to argue with you," Rachel said; Cassie just laughed.

"What is so intimidating, day ting. Ting. About this diaper, Prince Jake?" Ax asked; no one answered him.

In the end, he, Marco and Tobias were the ones who had to choose the volunteer from among themselves. The decision was made through a short game of Rock, Paper, Scissors; whoever didnt match up with what the other two chose would be the one handling the diaper. In the end, the task fell to Jake; he was certain that there had been some form of collusion between Marco and Tobias, but for the life of him he couldnt prove it.

Wanting to get the distasteful job over and done with as quickly as he reasonably could, he made his way casually over to the trashcan. Making sure that there wasnt anyone paying too much attention to what he was doing, he extracted the diaper from its resting place, taking care to wrap it in a pair of paper towels that didnt feel used in any particular way.

"I dont suppose _you_ want this," he said sardonically, offering the diaper to Marco.

"What is it?" Ax asked, looking from Jakes face to the diaper in his hands.

"A diaper," Jake said, shuddering again. "Baby poop."

"Diaper gravy," Marco corrected, sounding semi-amused. "Were going to use the diaper gravy to guide our flight as flies."

"I still dont understand."

"This would be one of those things that I really, really dont want to explain, Ax," he said with a sigh.

Carrying the diaper, carefully wrapped in its paper towel coating and making him feel not one whit better for the inclusion, he stuffed it into a large, standing ashtray not far from the gate entrance, then walked carefully but swiftly back to the others.

"That should do it," he said, glad to have that vile thing out of his hands. "Lets meet back up with the girls and Slade."

"See, now _this_ is why we arent Spider-man or Batman," Marco groused. "Spider-man never has to follow the trail of baby poop."

"Who is this spider man?" Ax asked; nobody answered.

"All right, its done," Jake said in a low voice, once the rest of the Animorphs were all gathered together; he couldnt help noticing that Slade seemed to be getting more agitated by the second. "Now, all we have to do is find some place to morph probably the bathrooms, since theyd be the most privacy were likely to find in a place like this and we can get on our way."

"I suppose this wouldnt be the best time to mention that I hate public restrooms," Shara said wryly, though there was an element of honest distaste in her tone.

"Not really, no," he said, smiling back at her in the same manner. "Okay, that aside, we really should get going now."

There was a general agreement on that, with a bit of theatrical grumbling from Shara, but nothing really annoying or damaging in any way. Once they all reached the bathrooms, they split up into two groups along gender lines. Jake would have almost preferred to keep them together, but that would have caused more problems than it ultimately solved.


	10. Downsides of Heroism

When she entered the bathroom where they would all be morphing, Shara was hit by an intense waft of air-freshener. The stench was nasty, cloying, and stuck in her nose to an even greater degree than it had when shed been just an ordinary human.

"Lets just do this and get it _over_ with," she groaned, trying not to inhale through her nose if she could help it. "The stench is making me nauseous."

"Come in here with me, sis," Rachel said kindly, leading her into a handicapped stall. "Ill help you if it turns out you need to throw up."

"Thanks," she said, not in any kind of mood to correct Rachel, or even to ask what the other girl had had in mind. "I think I just might have to."

The smell was thick and overpowering, and only by focusing her remaining attention on the hand Rachel had put on her left shoulder to guide her was Shara able to keep herself steady. She had always hated the scent of public restrooms, but this was a whole new reason to loathe them. _Of all the senses to have enhanced; what would you even _do _with a better sense of smell, anyway?_ she groused.

"All right, I think we pulled that one off without a hitch," Rachel said, low and urgent and right in her ear. "But if were going to be able to meet up with the others, Im going to need you to focus. Do you thing you can do that, Shara?"

"Gah," she responded, fanning her hand in front of her nose with a sort of desperate urgency. "I dont think so. I thing I might _honestly _have to throw up," she admitted.

Rachels solution was as simple as it was unexpected; pinching Sharas nose shut, she turned a serious expression on the other girl. "Now, Shara, I need you to focus on that fly you acquired. You think you can manage that _now_?"

"If it gets you to let go of my nose, I will," she said, in the same low tone that Rachel had been using.

Closing her eyes and keeping her mouth open to breathe, Shara focused on the tiny little body of the fly that she had caught sometime yesterday. The first thing she noticed was that Rachel no longer seemed to have quite as good a grip on her nose as she had had before. Before she could ponder that too deeply, a strange feeling, something like an extreme feeling of dryness only without the itching that usually accompanied it came over every inch of her skin.

"I dont think you really want to open your eyes now, Shara," Rachel said, sounding a bit strange herself for some reason or other.

Deciding that satisfying her curiousity was more important than following some vague, cryptic advice even when it came from someone who she considered a friend Shara opened her eyes. Raising her hands into her line of sight, she was just in time to watch as two of her fingers curved forward into little claws, and her thumb and the rest of her fingers split up into sticky pads and an uncountable number of small, stiff hairs.

__

(Oh ick. _This is really disgusting.)_ And it was, but it was also fascinating in its own way.

This was something that she had never experienced before; something that no Teknoman and precious few humans, for that matter had ever done in their lives.

(I know,) Rachel said, sounding _honestly_ disgusted. (I _hate_ morphing flies.)

__

(Well, I have to agree that theyre not my favorite _thing in the world,)_ she said, watching as the morph progressed. _(But this is something very few people get to do in their lives. That has to count for something, Id think.)_

(Youre weird, Shara,) Rachel said, after what seemed like a pause to think.

(In more ways than you think, Rachel,) she retorted, finally getting the knack of using thought-speak rather than her telepathic powers for this morph.

(I guess I cant argue with _that_,) Rachel said, sounding amused. (Hey, Cassie? Are you done in there yet?)

(Yeah, Im finished,) the other girl said, and Shara saw, in that weird way the fly had of seeing, another fly buzz under the door of the stall and join up with them in the air.

It was kind of strange, when she thought about it, the way shed gone along so easily with the flys desire to be airborne when she usually isolated herself from the mind of the animal she was morphing except when she needed it for some specific task. Reflecting back on what had gone through her mind while shed been finishing her fly morph, she found that the flys desire for altitude had reflected some subconscious desire of hers.

Radam like she was now, although she still didnt like to think about it if they werent spending time within their sa- hidden bases underground, liked high places. Where they could survey the terrain and be protected from any kind of ambush. That, she realized, was why she felt so comfortable in the hayloft in spite of the fact and she was immensely grateful for this that it was nothing like a Radam base in any respect.

Even with the fact that it was obviously the Animorphs center of operations, she knew now that she would have been a lot more on-edge if shed been on the ground somewhere.

(All right,) Rachel said, taking the lead in their little trio of flies. (Lets go meet up with the guys.)

Buzzing out of the bathroom, having once again isolated herself from the fly mind sharing space with her own, Shara tried to get a feel for the eyes. They really _werent_ very good, like Jake had said, but it still interesting to have to use them all the same. Colors were all neon-looking, and everything was pixilated all to hell, but those facts only made things more interesting.

She thought she could recognize a human now, in spite of the topsy-turvy colors, and the shattered-mirror eyes, but she wasnt entirely sure yet.

(Okay, this is cool,) she heard Tobias say, in the tone of someone who wasnt expecting to say anything of the sort. (Once you get past the fact that your own body makes you want to throw up.)

(Marco feels that way in his human body,) Rachel interjected gleefully.

They were hovering in the air, near something she wasnt sure she _wanted_ to recognize, staring at five other flies. Or, what she was starting to realize was a _flys_ way of seeing other flies. It wasnt so much that she recognized them with what could laughably be called her fly vision, oh no, this was more like recognizing people by scent. An odd concept, really, but she was starting to work out at least the basics.

(Oooh,) Marco said, in an overblown you-have-wounded-me tone. (Dont hurt me with the chakram of your wit, _Xena_.)

(Huh?) she joined the others in asking.

(Chakram,) Marco said, in an almost perfect mimicry of her brother Cains Im-talking-to-complete-idiots-here tone. (Its the metal Frisbee thing Xena throws. What _are_ you people, cultural morons? Well, not that Id expect our three resident aliens to know, of course.)

(What do you mean, three?) Cassie asked, before Shara could ask that very question.

(Well, Ax, of course,) Marco said, stating the obvious with remarkable aplomb. (And Slade and Shara might as well be aliens.)

(I resemble that remark,) she said, wishing for a moment that they were both in human form so that she could flick him on the forehead, the way she did with her brothers at least, back when she _had_ brothers.

(So, what now?) Tobias asked, drawing their attention back to the matters at hand before they could all go off on a tangent.

(Now we get on the plane,) Jake said. (But look, everyone be very careful out there. Use those fly instincts: something moves toward you, you get out of the way.)

(That goes for you, too, Jake,) she said.

(I can more or less see the gate,) Cassie said; if she really could, she had one-up on Shara herself, since all she could see was a pixilated blur of various colors and shades. (No, wait. I think it may just be the window. Thats going to be a problem: the gate doesnt have enough contrast between light and dark for us to see it clearly.)

(Get in close to a person,) Jake said, sounding like hed been thinking it over. (Stay with that person till youre in the walkway. We can figure the rest out from there.)

(Right,) she and Slade answered, almost at the same time; she made a concerted effort not to let that remind her of anything.

Tracking down a likely person, she landed in their thick, windblown hair, and let them carry her forward into the covered walkway that connected the jet to the terminal.

(Everyone here?) Jake asked, after a few interminable moments; she really didnt like being something with such a small, fragile, easily crushable body.

Maybe it was just her Radam-derived instincts acting up, but she was getting bad vibes from this whole thing. No one else seemed to be having any problems, though, so she probably wouldnt mention it. She would still be on alert, though; for all the good it would do her in this tiny, helpless morph of hers.


	11. Tedium and Transit

(Ax, keep track of the time, okay?) Jake asked, once all of the others had confirmed their presence aboard the plane.

(Yes, Prince Jake,) the Andalite said; Shara smiled inwardly, predicting Jakes next words.

(You know I dont want you to call me "Prince Jake".) And there they were. (I am not a prince.)

(Yes, Prince Jake, I know.)

(Good, just as long as were clear on that.)

Shara couldnt help it; she laughed. It was good to have something to laugh about, especially considering the fact that she was hoping for a nice, boringly safe flight. Hoping that the bad feeling she had been having, was still having, if one wanted to be particular about it, was nothing more than nerves, Shara made a concerted effort to settle back down. She wouldnt do anyone any good jumping at shadows.

XXX

It was odd, the way that even _after_ he had taken the precaution of monitoring his teknoplants far more closely than he suspected that any Warlord had done in the past things still seemed to be going wrong. His young warrior Javelin had been the first to come to him, but he had kept the boy in reserve, since his temperament was far from ideally suited to becoming a Guide.

The once-human who had been named Fritz Wallace had been a much better candidate; Jessy Summers had been attached to humanity as a whole, and for the most part in the abstract, yes and so might have been tempted to become a traitor. It happened at times; even such methods as the Radam possessed were not completely infallible. Such ones were dealt with as they should be, of course; Darkon could only try to mitigate the circumstances that might produce such people.

He was almost tempted to resort to his Othersense, but such visions as he was granted by that power were not entirely precise. They were, for the most part, dreamlike, disjointed, and heavily suffused with metaphor. He remembered that from his own experience; just before the Radam had come to Navris, he had had a vision of their invasion.

Along with the splitting, almost blinding pain in his temples, he had beheld shapes and colors; images that seemed to mean nothing, and figures that were only loosely identifiable as bipeds and quadrupeds. Once he had beheld the Radams Teknomen for the first time, he _had_ realized that those had been the creatures in his vision and likewise with the Nikhau but such things were not particularly helpful. Hed no need for information that couldnt be used until just barely after the fact.

This was the conclusion that he had come to after reviewing the memories of his various visions over the time that he had used his Othersense.

XXX

The flight had been pretty boring, something Jake had to admit that he was extremely grateful for. The Animorphs had had more than enough excitement on their missions so far, and they were probably going to start having it again once they all got off this plane, so he for one was glad to just be bored on their way out to WAA headquarters.

When the thrumming of the engines began to grow increasingly higher in pitch, Jake knew that they were just about to take off. He also found out where hed managed to land: the vibrations from the flight attendants speech nearly blew him off the speaker hed been perched on. Zipping around aimlessly for a long few moments, Jake came to rest smoothly on the latch of one of the overhead storage bins.

(Hows everyone doing?) he asked, hoping that the others were all right.

(Twenty minutes have elapsed,) Ax said.

(How long is this flight again, Marco?) he asked, not entirely sure he remembered correctly, and not wanting to take those kinds of chances.

(An hour and thirty minutes,) Marco answered quickly. (That leaves us fifteen minutes to get off the plane at the other end and demorph.)

(Thats cutting it a bit close,) Rachel observed.

(Technically, wed have thirty minutes after the plane touches down,) Shara said, sounding thoughtful. (But thats still not much margin for error, and thats not even taking the landing process into account.)

(Yeah,) Jake said, twitching his antennae for lack of anything better to do.

There was really nothing for his fly brain to concentrate on; nothing to distract him from the sheer monotony of the flight. Nothing, that was, until the food was served; it was difficult in the extreme, to restrain the flys urge to land in one of the Salisbury steaks that had just been served and start merrily feasting.


	12. Flies and Food

(I certainly hope thats not one of us, down there in that steak,) Shara said, drawing his attention back to the present.

(_What_?)

(Relax, little miss killjoy,) Marco said, obviously speaking mostly to Shara. (Airline food tastes much better this way.)

(Marco, what are you _doing_?)

(Easy, fearless leader. Its a meal some guy already ate. Im in the leftovers.)

Jake relaxed just a hair, for just a few moments, until he heard the booming voice, one that seemed to overpower all of the other booming voices, as if it had been amplified for his senses alone: "Excuse me, miss, but there seems to be a lot of flies on this plane."

(Thats not good,) Shara said, echoing Jakes own feelings on the matter.

(Did everyone else hear that?) he asked urgently.

(Hear what?) Tobias asked, sounding confused and slightly annoyed. (Everyones talking. This whole plane is one-)

(Someone just complained about the flies,) he informed his fellow Animorphs, just in case he and Shara had been the only ones to hear that man speaking. (About _us_!)

"Ill see what I can do, sir," another loud, booming voice spoke.

(Theyre going to see what they can do!) he repeated, for the benefit of the others, in case they didnt happen to realize yet just how much trouble they were all in.

"Id appreciate that," the first huge, booming voice said. "See, I am on the board of directors for this airline, and I just saw a _fly_ land in my Salisbury steak."

(Marco!) he and Shara shouted, almost at the same time. (Get out of there!) Shara added.

"Yes, sir!" the other, huge voice shouted. "Ill take care of it right away!"

(Ax!) he demanded. (How much time till we land?)

(Ten minutes,) the Andalite said quickly.

(Okay,) he said, steadying his nerves by taking charge; concentrating on getting his people out of danger. (Everyone toward the back of the plane! Get out of first class!)

Buzzing along the ceiling, suddenly more active than they had been for the entirety of the flight before them, the eight Animorphs in fly morph mush have made quite a sight. All the while, Jake kept his fly senses on high-alert; he was close to the curtain that separated first class from the rest of the people on the plane, just a little bit farther, when-

The air roiled, as a huge mass a human hand, but much larger and closer than he had _ever_ wanted to see one as a fly passed through the air beneath him. _Much_ too close for comfort.

(Man, that was close,) he muttered, still shaking from the after-effects. (Is everyone still okay? Ax, how much time do we have left to wait?)

He never heard the answer to either question.


	13. Shattered

She saw it happen, as if in a distorted dream, with everything happening in slow-motion. Leaping from her own perch, intending to knock Jake out of the way of those hands and carry them both to safety on her back, or with her head if that didn't work, Shara flew faster and more purposefully than any other fly ever had. She thought for a moment that she might have heard people calling to her, but she ignored them and flew all the faster.

She would break her own wings, if that's what it took, but she would _not_ stand idly by and let another friend suffer.

Jake was screaming; the noise filled her head as she bore down on the hand he was stuck to. Slamming him with all the force of her momentum, Shara rolled over him and overshot her mark. Cursing her helpless body and near-useless legs, she was just about to turn and make another go of it, when she felt a horrible, crushing pressure on the back half of her body.

The unrelenting force pressed her into a hard surface, either one of the walls, or a rounded corner of the ceiling itself. She didn't know just how badly she'd been damaged by the impact, since the body of a fly felt no pain, but she knew one thing: she had failed. Screaming briefly in frustrated rage, Shara tried to push off with her six legs, but only four of them worked.

She could hear Jake himself screaming somewhere nearby, his own voice filled with terror and anguish that made her feel all the worse for her own inadequacy. Finally giving up on her struggle, finding that she was too firmly stuck for her weak fly legs to do any good, she rested to conserve the remainder of her strength.

(Jake! Whats happened?) Cassie asked, and Shara was touched by her concern. (Are you and Shara all right?)

(What happened to you guys?) Marco asked.

(I- I think we got hit,) Jake said shakily; she couldn't blame him for that.

(Are you guys okay?) Tobias asked.

(No. Well, I'm not, at least,) he said. (I got busted up pretty bad. I cant fly. I cant even move. I'm- I'm pretty badly stuck. Stuck to the ceiling, I think.)

(Shara, what about you?) Cassie asked, sounding like she was hanging onto her composure by sheer will alone.

(I'm in the same situation, just a bit farther off,) she admitted. (Two of my legs won't move, but I haven't tried my wings yet.)

(They'll be okay if they demorph,) Marco said, obviously trying to be reasonable; there were a few issues with what he had just said, though

(How are they going to demorph?) Tobias demanded. (The both of them are squished on the ceiling. If they demorph, its going to be right in front of a plane-load of people.)

(I'm not going to demorph in front of Controllers if I can help it,) she said, wanting to reassure them. (We'll find another way.)

(Guys? I I feel like maybe I'm getting weak,) Jake said, his thought-speak sounding strained and distant. (Woozy. My guts are all over the place. I think I may be dying.)

If anyone else said anything, she didn't hear it; all she could concentrate on was the fact that she was going to lose someone else. A friend who she hadn't even known all that long. _NO! Not again; I refuse to just stand by and watch this happen! Not again!_

She had power now; great and terrible power, a power that would break her and everyone else she cared about if she didn't use it carefully, but power all the same. There _had_ to be something that she could do and, searching the data that had been forced into her mind by the Radam, she found that there was.

Concentrating, she reached out; surrounding Jake's fuzzy, confused, drifting mind with her own telepathic powers, she forced her own consciousness into it. She could hold him that way, give him some of her strength, so that they would both live

Or they would plunge screaming into the abyss together.

_So many things she had to do; she wanted revenge, and yet the one person she wanted to hurt above all others was completely beyond her power to affect; so many decisions he'd made; choices that had hurt not only the enemy, but his friends as well, but he would press on; everyone needed him to be strong; secrets that they kept, to protect the family members that they still had close to them; a glance, a look- he was her brother, though he didnt remember the things she did; she wouldn't let Darkon have him; words with double-meanings, a war that had separated them; he was his brother, the Yeerks wouldnt keep him forever_

_She was Shara Carter, an Animorph, a Teknoman; he was Jake Berenson, an Animorph; they were the same_

_Shara, you shouldnt be doing this. There was the mental impression of someone glaring at him, though she seemed more annoyed than honestly angry. Oh, shut up you self-sacrificing idiot; no one's dying today._

And that was that; nothing was going to change her mind, leader of the Animorphs or not. She wasn't going to let anyone else die; he wouldn't have done anything else, but then he was the leader

(Jake! Shara! You have to demorph, right now! You're in the bathroom, so you'll be safe.)

It took a few moments for her to shake off Jake's memories; to reorient herself to just _who_ and _what_ she really was, but in that time, she took in the sight of six flies-as-seen-through-fly-eyes, carrying another fly, and reaching down past the edges of her shattered-mirror vision to carry her as well. In that time, she supposed that her disorientation had been mistaken for something else entirely.

(Come on, you two. Back to human now.)

(Jake. Shara. This is Cassie,) the other girl said firmly, without even the slightest edge of panic; Shara was impressed. (Listen to me: the both of you have to demorph. You have to do it now.)

(Well, you heard the woman, Jake,) she said, releasing the last of her holds on the boy's mind. (We'd better do what she says.)

(Yeah,) Jake said, sounding like his strength was starting to ebb again, without her there to bear him up; she wasn't surprised. (We'd better do it. Shara?)

(Yeah?)

(Thanks.)


	14. Return as Human

There wasn't a pressing need for him to say anything else after that, so Jake just focused on demorphing. He hadn't even known that Shara was _capable_ of something like that, but he knew now that it was strictly a measure of last-resort. It would have been entirely too easy, if his body had been too far-gone, for him to have trapped Shara's consciousness in his own dying mind, leaving her body completely brain-dead and with no chance of ever recovering.

He also knew, though, that it would be completely pointless for him to try to forbid Shara from ever doing that again; if the situation ever came up where she needed to do something like that again, then she would do it in a heartbeat. That was just who she was. _He_ would just have to make sure that that kind of a situation didn't come up again.

He would have to be better than he was, if he was going to make sure that all of his people would be all right.

As his own, human DNA reasserted itself, erasing his fly features and undoing the damage that had been done to him by that persons hand, Jake closed his eyes as soon as his eyelids reemerged. He didn't really want to look into the face of someone who was undergoing the same kind of horrific changes that he himself was going through. It would have been bad enough if he'd just been looking in a mirror.

"Jake, it's all right," Shara said softly. "You can look now."

Opening his eyes, he found himself staring into the calm, relaxed face of a girl, about his own age, who he knew a great deal more about than he had this morning. He knew she missed her family; even Slade, though that feeling was compounded by the fact that while her older brother was still with her physically, he wasn't the same person that she remembered. He knew she had a deep, seething hatred for Darkon, and more than that he knew who Darkon _was_.

Visser Three on steroids, basically.

"We made it," he breathed.

"Yeah," she smiled. "We did make it. Now," she said, looking slightly uncomfortable. "Would you mind moving your hand? Its in kind of an unfortunate place."

Looking down at his hands, he found that his right palm was jammed almost flat against her left breast. Wincing slightly, he shifted and tried to move into a less compromising position. Unfortunately, that had consequences of its own.

"Ack!" he grunted. "Shara, could you try getting your knee out of my crotch?"

"Sure," she said; they both shifted a bit more, each trying not to jam their hands or assorted other parts into any inconvenient places.

Even the flies, buzzing around above both their heads, were ignored in favor of trying to set themselves both back to rights without elbowing or kneeing the other more than could be avoided. Jake was the first one to reach the latch, so he opened it and let them all out. The few people who noticed them all seemed to be amused; but then, their mussed, messy hair and slightly askew clothes could easily be mistaken for something more innocuous.

Especially considering the fact that they had come out of such a small, intimate place together.

Joining the thronging crowd as they left the plane, Jake squeezed Shara's hand briefly, and then tugged her over to a row of chairs within line-of-sight of the bathrooms. They sort of leaned against each other, both taking silent comfort in the others presence, until Cassie joined up with them. She sat down on the other side of Jake, and then reached over his lap to hold Shara's hand.

"That was bad," she said, looking earnestly at the two of them.

"Yeah, it was definitely bad. Not as bad as it _could_ have been," he resisted the urge to look over at Shara; he didn't really want to encourage her, even in spite of the fact that he knew she would do whatever she felt was necessary to protect the people she cared about. "But I'm fine, and she's fine," this time he _did_ look over, with a slight smile on his face. "So we can deal with it."


	15. Brave Face

"Yeah, right, Jake," Cassie said, letting him go and turning so she could fix him with a gimlet stare. "It's okay to be scared. You both had a very bad experience."

"No," he said. "I'm fine."

"I'm fine, too," Shara said, and he smiled at her as she took his hand and they stood up together. "Though I do hope the others get here soon; I'd like to get this over with quickly."

"Yeah," he said, as he saw Rachel striding purposefully towards them. "Me, too."

"I'm going to go get us some shoes," his cousin said, giving him a quick explanation of how she'd already sent the money by Western Union, and she just had to get it, before heading out to one of the many shops in the airport to attempt to get them some passable footwear.

The rest of their group came out of the men's room then, Slade looking about as irate as Jake had ever seen him. However, there was really nothing he could do about the older boy's distress. Shara had told him - well, he'd seen it in her mind while they had been er, mind-melded - how thoroughly disgusting the public restrooms were to someone with her senses.

At least Slade didn't look like he was going to do anything violently homicidal; not without provocation, anyway.

"You two okay, man?" Marco asked, glancing from him to Shara and back again.

"We're getting there," Shara said, and he nodded.

"I think we'd both prefer to have our guts inside us from now on, as opposed to getting them smeared all over the nearest flat surface," he said.

"Yeah," Tobias said seriously. "Guts should not see daylight."

"Okay, that was a bit more excitement than I expected, but now we're all here," he said briskly, rising from his seat at almost the same moment as Cassie and Shara did likewise. "We have a job to do here, so let's get on with it. Marco? What's the plan?"

"We'll catch a bus from here to downtown; that's where the WAA Building is. We bust in, get to the computers, get the information we want, then catch the next plane home."

"_That's_ supposed to be the hard part: getting into the WAA office. The plane was supposed to be easy," Rachel groused. "Let's hope the WAA offices aren't as dangerous as the stupid plane."

"Hey, we'll just take a different airline home," Marco said. "We'll find one that likes and _appreciates_ flies."

He and Shara both laughed at that a bit more than the others, but when he felt Cassie's eyes on him, he looked over to see that she was giving them a contemplative look. Smiling at her, not wanting her to worry about things that had already been taken care of, Jake kept walking.

As they made their way away from the terminal and out of the airport, they all kept a lookout for a bus stop. They couldn't exactly walk all the way to downtown, not and expect to have any time or energy left over to get the job at hand done. Once they found one, they used the change that Rachel had left over from buying shoes for them all to pay for their fare.


	16. Food on the go

Once the bus had dropped them off in the downtown area, Shara couldn't help the small chuckle that escaped from her. She'd never expected to meet an actual nun; the only places she had encountered them before were in jokes and TV shows, and her family had never been particularly religious. The WAA building itself turned out to be only four blocks from the bus stop that they had all just left.

That was good; she would always prefer less walking to more, even _with _her enhanced stamina.

The only downside to being out on the open like this, so close to the road, was that the sounds and the smells of the cars were beginning to grate on her nerves. The smells burned the inside of her nose, and each time a car went by her nerves would grow a bit more frayed. She might have easily been convinced to do something drastic, had it not been for the fact that Jake steered them all into a Taco Bell before either she or Slade could act on their increasingly-destructive impulses.

The inside of the restaurant wasnt all _that_ much different from the outside, but the promise of food - not to mention the smell of it - did a lot to mute her desire to cause mass, homicidal mayhem. Even Slade seemed mollified, though he still tended to wince whenever someone spoke particularly loudly. She felt like doing the same, so that was almost normal.

For them, at least.

Telling Rachel what she wanted, since the other girl had generously offered to buy them all food with the rest of the money she had been carrying, she stood back as far as she could and tried to let the sea of noise that was all around her for the moment wash over her and flow away. It was what her old teacher had taught them all to do in situations like this, and if she tried hard enough, Shara was sure that she could get it to work for her now. Even _with_ all of the changes her body had gone through, mind over matter was still a thing of the _mind_.

And _her_ mind was still human.

Things were pretty quiet, and they seemed to be going pretty well, right up until Ax made the discovery about what exactly was inside the little packets that he had seemed so fascinated with. He didn't even linger over the Mild sauce, and only downed two of the Hot sauce packets, before diving right into the Fire sauce with gusto she hadn't even seen in her chili-loving Sensei. It was actually kind of funny, right up until someone called the manager and they were all thrown out.

Even then, Shara knew that she was going to be treasuring this memory; things with the Animorphs had a tendency to be grim, and therefore it was helpful to have a large store of funny memories that you could look back on. Besides, thinking of those she had had with her family would only serve to remind her more acutely of what she had lost. Good for reminding her of just why she fought Darkon, but she couldn't really take comfort in them the way she used to.

"You kids stay out of here," the manager said, wagging his finger sternly. "Buy your crazy friend a bottle of Tabasco if he needs it!"

"What is Tabasco? Tuh-bah-sco. Sco." Ax asked, once they had all gotten out of the irate manager's earshot. "Is it tasty and full of flavor?"

"Yeah, you'd probably love it," Rachel said, as she and the rest of the Animorphs continued on their way down the sidewalk, bags of Mexican fast food in hand.

Shara laughed; it was good to have friends like these.

XXX

Knowing what he knew where Darkon was concerned, Gunnar couldn't help but be a bit apprehensive when the Warlord granted his request to be allowed to search the forest for signs of where Slade and his little sister had gone off to. Darkon _had_ seemed kind of distracted, though, so maybe that was the reason that he hadn't inquired too deeply about what Gunnar had proposed. It probably meant that he was going to be required to account for his actions when he got back, however.

He would have to think up a good story on his way to and from the old Carter cabin.

Finally free of the confines of Darkon's underground base, Gunnar moved quickly throughout the forest. He couldn't take too direct a path to the old Carter place, since Darkon would probably sense his intentions later and question him about it; something neither he nor Mr. Carter could afford, so he meandered, even going back to that strange, animal-filled barn that Darkon had said that he kept sensing Shara in. The barn itself was an interesting place; obviously worked by a vet who knew their stuff, it always seemed to be full of animals.

Obviously doing good business, though he kind of doubted that anyone who worked there was actually being _paid_ for their services.

As he made his way closer to the old cabin, Gunnar turned over what he was going to say in his head. It couldn't be too elaborate, otherwise it would seem faked and probably prompt Darkon to look closer at _everything_ he was doing; something that neither he nor Mr. Carter could afford if they were going to stay alive during the coming war. Maybe it would just be best to keep things simple, then.

He didn't know quite how Slade and Shara were thinking now, but he and Darkon had both thought it stood to reason that Slade would seek familiar territory after all that he had been through. So maybe he just had to tell Darkon that he had been operating under _that_ assumption. Going to the cabin would probably sound sensible under those circumstances.

With that thought firmly in mind, Gunnar continued on his way to the closest thing he still had to a home.


	17. Tour Group

When they all stood in front of the WAA Building at last, Jake wondered for a long moment just how he was going to be able to get all of them inside without arousing any undue suspicion. They were already being a bit more conspicuous than he liked, loitering outside the building the way they all were doing. Even though they were trying to make it look like they hadn't all come here together, there was always the chance that they would be spotted.

That was when a bus pulled up to the front of the building, disgorging an array of old people in various clothes. Someone from the WAA Building came out to greet them, shaking the hand of the apparent leader of the group with a bright smile on his face.

"You folks are right on time," he said, seeming genuinely happy to see them. "If you're all ready, we can begin the tour immediately."

Seven of the eight of them shared a bemused look. "They have _tours_?" Tobias said finally, echoing the unspoken sentiment of the majority of the Animorphs.

"Guess so," Jake said; deciding, just this once, that he would trust to luck. "I guess we might as well tag along."

Falling into step at the back of the group, he noticed that none of the old people seemed to mind their presence. In fact, it was like none of them were even there at all. He figured that kids were pretty much invisible to old people; unless they were family, or they were being disruptive in some way.

The eight of them were polite, quiet, and unobtrusive; they passed right under the radar, as they said.

"As you may already know, Web Access America is the largest online service in the country," the tour guide stated, managing to make something that he had likely memorized by rote actually sound interesting. "We have over nine million subscribers, and were still growing strong."

"Well, _this_ was easy," Marco said, leaning over so he could whisper in Jake's ear.

"We're not anywhere, yet," he pointed out reasonably.

"Now, we'll start the tour by showing you our command center, where we monitor the ebb and flow of traffic across our entire system," the tour guide said cheerily.

Marco grinned; it seemed to be all he could do to keep himself from cackling. "Like taking candy from a baby."

Moving unobtrusively along with the crowd of senior citizens, the eight Animorphs piled into the two separate elevators that the group broke up into, then rejoined with the group as a whole when they all met up again. All the while being scrupulously careful to give the impression that they were only staying together because they were the only ones in their age-group.

Even Slade, who was clearly older than the rest of them.

The hallway that they were all now standing in was lined on both sides with expensive-looking oil paintings in gold frames; portraits of the various owners of Web Access America. Stopping before the portrait that held pride of place at the far end of the hallway, as well as being somewhat larger than the others, and surrounded by a more expensive-looking, but still tasteful frame, the tour guide smiled widely.

"And this is our founder: Joe Bob Fenestre. Later, we'll be showing a short, entertaining film about the fascinating life of Mr. Fenestre."

Clasping his hands in the manner of one about to make an obeisance before some ancient idol, Marco bowed slightly. Shara snickered, but Rachel, standing next to her, didn't find the action nearly so amusing.

"Hey," she hissed, lowly enough that no one who wasnt standing right next to them, or who didn't have enhanced senses, would have been able to hear her. "The idea is _not_ to attract attention, genius."

"I'm sorry," Marco said melodramatically, pretending to wipe away a tear. "This is _Joe Bob Fenestre_. I love Joe Bob. I want to _be_ Joe Bob."

"I hear they're doing wonderful things with plastic surgery these days," Shara said, giving Marco a sidelong smirk.

"I didn't know you were _that_ interested in computers, Marco," Cassie said, as Marco gave Shara low-five and a smirk. "I mean, I knew you like playing around with them, but-"

Marco waved a hand in dismissal. "It's not about _computers_. Who cares about computers when there are other things to think about?"

"Well, aren't computers the big thing with Fenestre?"

"No," Shara said, shaking her head slightly. "The big thing is the web-hosting company he's created here. But somehow, I don't think Marco's particularly interested in _that_, either."

"See?" Marco said, giving Shara an appreciative glance. "_She_ gets it."

"Joe Bob Fenestre is the second wealthiest man in the world, Cassie," Jake said, as Cassie looked askance at him. "I think _that's_ what Marco cares about, more than the computers or the web-host. Hey, Marco?"

"Yes?" Marco asked, with clear anticipation.

"Just how much is Fenestre worth?"

"_Mr._ Fenestre is worth twenty-four point nine billion dollars," Marco said, obviously relishing every word. "That's billion, with a b. As in _billion_."

"Billion is a very large number," Ax said.

Marco laughed. "You could buy all the Tabasco sauce in the world with it, Ax. All the Tabasco in the world, and _still_ have enough left to buy your own small country."

Turning left at a corner, their group came into line-of-sight with the command center. There were row after row of people working at computers, reminding Jake of the scenes of Mission Control at NASA he'd seen in movies and television and such. Giving a subtle signal to his fellow Animorphs, Jake fell back with them as the tour group moved on.

"Okay, there it is," he said, sweeping the others with a glance. "Now, how do we get in?"


	18. Battle plan

"How _do_ we get in?" Rachel echoed. "It's daytime and there are people around. This isn't how we usually do things; it's usually night."

Looking down the hall at the tour group, Jake saw that they were starting to move off. Someone would likely start to notice their presence soon, and being noticed wasn't something they could afford here. Or anywhere, really, but particularly not here.

There were various personnel coming and going in an intermittent stream to and from the command center, which would also be a factor in their being noticed sooner rather than later. Jake didn't know what kind of animal morph any of them would be able to use to get inside the command center and use the computers without being noticed. No one else seemed to, either.

Looking from Marco, who shrugged, to Rachel, he saw a subtle light in his cousin's eyes.

"We _could_ create a distraction," she said. "Set the place on fire, and then when everyone starts evacuating, we could-"

"Rachel," he said, cutting her off before she could go too far with that idea. "These are nice, normal, innocent people here. We can't just go around terrifying and endangering normal people."

Rachel nodded, and Jake nodded back; he'd at least managed to make his point. Then, just as he was starting to think over their limited options once again, Jake had a revelation: "_That's_ the morph we use here: nice, normal people."

"Wouldn't someone notice if they start seeing duplicate versions of the people here?" Slade asked; with a flick of his right wrist, he summoned one of the halves of his trademark weapon. "Or were you going to have me and Shara deal with them?"

"Put that _away_, Slade," Cassie hissed, looking around quickly for anyone who might have been close enough to see him with that serrated, split lance of his.

"And, I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't casually volunteer _me_ for assassination duty," Shara said quietly.

"Anyway, I don't really think that's one of your better ideas, Jake," Cassie said, after Slade had dismissed his weapon with another flick of his wrist.

"I think its brilliant," Marco said. "Possibly immoral, but brilliant. With the obvious exception of _terminating_ the people were going to be copying."

Slade's expression was one of confusion when Marco finished speaking, but Shara's quickly-stifled laughter made the other boy grin. "Nice Terminator impression," she said, once she had managed to get herself back under control.

"Humans _are _the animals that are native to this particular environment," Ax pointed out, after he had stared in confusion for a few moments at Marco and Shara.

"We like to think of ourselves as more than just animals, Ax," Rachel said.

"Why?"

"I don't know; we just do," Rachel said, shrugging. "Or at least as the best animals around. Most of us, anyway."

"The best?" Ax echoed, sounding mildly confused. "How would you define _best_?"

"We alone, out of all the animals, have the ability to create TV shows," Marco snarked. Then he became serious. "Why are we even _talking_ about this? What's the big deal, here? Ax's human morph is made up of bits of DNA from almost every one of us. What's the difference now?"

"The difference is that everyone who's a part of that morph consented. We all gave our permission before he acquired us," Cassie stated.

"Who really cares, so long as it works?" Rachel asked.

"How would we be any different from the Yeerks, then?"

"What're you _saying_, Marco?" Slade asked, looking askance at the younger boy. "Weren't you the one who was all for this plan of Jake's in the first place?"

"Besides," Rachel said. "It's not like were going to be taking over their _minds_ or anything. We'd just be using their DNA, just like any of the animals we morph."

Everyone looked at Jake then, and for a moment the boy in question marveled at the authority he seemed to have over this group he was part of. Slade and Shara were both older, Slade moreso than Shara even, and yet _he_ was the one who was put forward to make the various decisions that the Animorphs found themselves confronted by on their various missions. It was a distinction he hadn't really wanted, back during the early days of the war, and he still wasn't sure he wanted it at times like this.

He was being counted on to make an important moral decision, in a hallway when they only had two minutes of usable time; and they were in a war now, what did it matter if some of the things they ended up having to do make him uncomfortable?

"The whole reason we're fighting at all is to keep people free," he said, with a shake of his head. "If we start going against that, using peoples' DNA without their permission, then while we may not be as bad as the Yeerks, we'll have started down that same road. We'll have to find another way."


	19. Ultimate Diversion

Cassie looked like she was proud of him for saying that, which almost made Jake blush in front of the entire group; Marco would have never let him live that down, though, he held onto his composure with determined tenacity.

"So, how _are_ we going to do what we came here to do, oh great and fearless leader?" Rachel asked, with a slightly amused air.

"We go in with a distraction. But we don't start any fires, and we don't endanger anyone. We just give them all something to look at that's so fascinating, so weird and completely impossible to ignore, that none of them will even think to check what's happening behind them. Since Ax and Marco are the big computer geniuses around here, they'll be the ones going in. Ax in his human morph, and Marco as himself."

"So, Marco won't be human?" Rachel asked, a slight smirk visible on her face.

"That was a good one," Marco said, returning her smirk with a slightly wider one. "Fast, too."

"Thank you."

"Ax and Marco head inside," Jake reiterated, trying to get the plan all straight so everyone knew what they were doing. "The rest of us put on a show that no one will be able to ignore, then we all haul butt out of here."

"All right," Slade said, with a nod, not seeming particularly upset that the plan had been changed so radically on him; then again, Jake couldn't remember any times when Slade had seemed particularly upset about _anything_.

He really was an astonishingly easygoing person.

They broke up into two groups, Marco and Ax heading off to take care of business in the command center, while the rest of them ducked into a smallish janitors closet. One that was going to get a whole heck of a lot smaller when the six of them had finished their morphs, of course. Once they had taken care of the shoes they had all brought with them, something they did while he was explaining the plan that he had worked out to create a distraction, Jake relaxed a bit.

"All right," he said. "I don't know how long we're going to have before someone needs to use the supplies in here, but we should all start morphing now."

"Yes, Jake," Slade said.

None of the others acknowledged his suggestion in the way Slade did, but they all closed their eyes and started morphing just the same. The closet was soon filled with the spectacle of twisting, warping, reforming bodies; anyone who opened the door now would likely think that they had lost their mind. More than likely, they would run screaming from the horror they were seeing.

Unless, of course, they were a Controller.

Jake, for his part, was glad to have closed his eyes before the changes to his own body - and those of his friends and fellow Animorphs - had started. He didn't need to see the way his friends' bodies were mutating; human limbs growing fur, human bodies twisting into animal shapes, human forms being subsumed completely by the transformation. Just hearing it in such close quarters was bad enough for him.

(Everybody ready?) he asked, once his better-than-human hearing had stopped being filled with the sounds of morphing.

(Yes, Jake.)

(Yes. But, I just want to say that this is _completely_ undignified,) Rachel grumbled.

(Do you have your mop?) he asked, taking a moment to scan the room and assess the others.

Everyone, with the necessary exception of Cassie, had taken on their typical combat morphs: Slade and Shara were a panther and a leopard, sitting on their hind legs and looking at the others with fierce, predator eyes, with Slade occasionally flexing his huge, curved claws; Rachel was in her grizzly morph, a moving mountain of thick fur, dense bones, sharp claws, with powerful muscle and sinew; Tobias had actually _de_morphed, and was now a swift-winged Red-Tailed Hawk, with keen eyes, sharp, ripping talons and a hooked, tearing beak.

Cassie, however, had become the one thing that no one in their right mind would ever want to mess with: a skunk.

(Yes,) Rachel sneered, obviously still annoyed by the whole production. (I have my mop.)

(Cassie?) he asked, turning his eyes to the second-smallest member of their group. (You ready?)

(Yes,) Cassie said, but she was obviously distracted by something. (But, we can't afford to lose these shoes. We don't have the money to buy any more.)

The shoes in question had been tied together by their laces, and looped over the necks of the largest members of their group of morphs. Cassie's and Tobias' had been shoved under one of the shelves; he would have to come back for them later.

(Everyone ready?) he asked, looking around at the others in their various morphs; a chorus of confirmation answered his query. (Okay, let's go.)

(Just one, slight problem, Jake,) Rachel pointed out. (Who's going to open the door to this closet?)

Jake was stumped for a long moment; yes, these were some of the biggest, most dangerous, most intimidating morphs they had, but none of them really had anything that resembled hands. Hence, no normal way of opening the door in front of them. Still, there _was_ an easy way to do it.

(Rachel? Why don't _you_ just open it?)

(Cool,) she said; she raised her right foreleg up over her head, swayed back on her feet slightly, then brought her paw down on the door in front of them. (There. _Now_ it's open.)

The six of them trotted placidly out into the hall, and then over to the large observation window that looked down into the WAA command center. All of the employees were sitting calmly at their workstations, completely oblivious to the fact that they now had a very different audience than the tourists that their company had played host to earlier today.

(No one's watching us,) Tobias groused, from his place on Slade's back. (They haven't even noticed were here.)

(We can take care of that,) Jake said, casting an aside glance at his two fellow big cats. (Can't we, guys?)

(We most certainly can, Jake,) Shara said, with an amused chuckle; Slade merely nodded.

(All right, deep breaths, everyone,) Jake called, sounding almost jovial himself.

Three large cats took three large breaths, cutting loose with three large roars. Jake quickly picked up the mop bucket that he had set down before making his own contribution to the Animorphs' efforts. Every single eye in the WAA command center was upon them now, and what they saw behind the glass kept them watching:

Rachel, one of the largest, most terrifying carnivores on land, the one that most people had been taught to recognize and avoid lest they be mauled and likely eaten, was engaged in the most harmless, mundane activity imaginable: she had a mop, and was swinging it back and forth over the floor like some kind of a professional. Jake, one of the largest and most easily-recognizable of the cat family, held a bucket of mop water in his teeth. Shara and Slade, two large and terrifying cats in their own right, had their heads thrown back, mouths open, and were yowling like the alley cats that most of the employees had heard at one point or another in their lives.

And, circling over all of their heads, shrieking as if to keep tempo for the ersatz song of the two large cats below him, the Red-Tailed Hawk that was Tobias let loose his distinctive cry.

Needless to say, no one in the room so much as turned a hair, when two kids - Marco, and Ax in his human morph - crept into to back of the control center and accessed one of the computer. Neither of them needed to bother with defeating the security on the computer, since it had been abandoned by one of the employees. One who was even now staring in slack-jawed confusion at the six animals visible through the glassed-in wall at the front of the room.

"Is that a bear?" Jake heard one of the employees ask.

"Yeah," another answered, looking like he didn't believe what he'd just said, or even what he was seeing; Jake didn't really blame him.

"Is it mopping the floor?"

"Yeah."

"Have we all gone _nuts_?" a third employee asked, looking up at them like she couldn't quite decide whether or not to laugh.

"I'm not nuts, it's that bear who's nuts," the second employee said. "That's carpeted up there."

"Why does it have the sneakers around its neck?" the first employee asked. "Is this some kind of a Dadaist performance-art, or something?"

"No idea."

Listening with half an ear to the conversations swirling around the room in front of him, and the occasional screams as someone broke and ran, Jake resisted the urge to check on what Marco and Ax were doing. Looking that way too much might end up getting someone curious about just what was going on over there; best to leave that kind of thing to Tobias. All of the people who hadn't ran out of the room were now staring at the six of them as they cavorted around mopping the floor.

It was an interesting experience, Jake had to admit, since the Animorphs usually went out of their way _not_ to attract attention to themselves when they were on a mission.

(Marco just winked,) Tobias reported. (They must be doing okay.)

(Two more minutes,) he said, reminding himself and the others that this mission had a deadline, too. (Then we get out of here before someone thinks to call security.)

(Too late,) Cassie said, looking to the door. (Here they come! Two guys, both with handguns.)


	20. Security Farce

(Oh, man.) Jake would have rolled his eyes if he'd still been in human form. (Okay. We'll try to scare them off, first.)

(Why don't you just leave that to me?) Shara asked, and there was something about her tone that suggested she'd be smiling if she had a human face.

(Don't do anything crazy out there,) he said.

(Please. Do I look like my brother?)

He didn't know quite how to respond to that, so Jake made up his mind to watch. He didn't want anyone to get hurt if he could avoid it, and while he didn't _think_ that Shara would do anything as drastic as Slade would under the same circumstances, he couldn't help remembering those two guards that they had encountered on their trip to Ocean World. Sure, Slade had been responsible for one of them, but Shara had been right there with him when he'd killed one of them; she'd been the one to kill the other, in fact.

Watching her closely, knowing that he would be able to stop her from doing anything _too _drastic if it came down to a fight between the two of them, Jake tried to figure out what Shara's plan might be. When she crouched, waving her tail back and forth like she was just about to pounce, Jake tensed. She _did_ spring at one of them, but to his relief all Shara did was knock the guard to the floor and lick his face like some kind of oversized dog.

It was actually kind of cute; kind of funny.

Shara batted at the other man with her paws; claws retracted so she wouldn't do him any lasting damage, and knocked the guard on his butt by rubbing against his legs like she was an overgrown housecat. Jake couldn't help but laugh a bit at her antics: she stole one of the men's guns and batted it around like a toy, pushed the other man out of the room with her head, and play-tackled the first man.

When she shoved _him_ out of the room as well, Jake noticed that he hadn't been the only one to find Shara's antics so amusing. Almost all of the people who had been watching them were in an uproar, pointing and laughing at Shara in her leopard morph as she cavorted and pranced around in front of the window.

(All right,) Tobias reported. (It looks like Marco and Ax are done.)

(All right then, people,) Jake said, directing his thought-speak to all of his fellow Animorphs. (Let's bail.)

(Right, Jake,) Slade said.

They bolted from the room, leaving behind the sounds of incredulous laughter, and even oddly enough some scattered applause. Dragging their cheap tennis shoes, Jake himself taking a moment to retrieve Cassie's and Tobias' shoes and hang them around his own neck, the morphed Animorphs all made their way down the halls.

Spotting an elevator at the far end of the hall they were all traveling in, Jake watched as Tobias flew forward to punch the call button with his beak. Breathing a bit easier when he saw that Tobias hadn't been injured by his actions, Jake roared with the others to scare away the crowd that had gathered, peeking out of their office doors as the group of morphed Animorphs sped by. Seconds later, the hallways were clear of observers.

The elevator doors parted smoothly, revealing two people inside the car: one of them a business-suited man, and a kid that looked the same age as Slade. Both of them ran out of the elevator as fast as their legs could carry them, allowing Jake and the other morphed Animorphs to pile into the elevator as quickly as they could. The elevator was crowded, of course, what with all of their battle-morphs crowded together inside it, but the six of them made do.

And, as they all started demorphing, the crowded space inside the elevator car began to seem more roomy.

Jake let himself breathe a bit more easily when he saw all of the others finishing their demorphs - or morphs, in Tobias' case - and beginning to pull on the cheap shoes that Rachel had bought for them all, lacing them back up and tying them quickly. Everything seemed to be normal now, at least enough so that he was reasonably confidant that they'd be able to make it past whatever kind of trouble their antics in the control room had stirred up.


	21. Police Presence

The elevator slowed to a stop in the lobby, and when the doors slid open, Jake tried not to react to the small army of city police dressed in SWAT-style uniforms crowding into the lobby at a swift march. They were heavily armed, and as Jake made his way past them to meet up with Marco and Ax, who were standing in a corner staring at the tableaux in front of them as if it was the most fascinating thing that either of them had ever seen, Jake saw one of the officers looking his way.

"Did you kids see a bear?" he asked, casting a glance over all of them.

"Yeah, right," Rachel said, laughing as if that was the funniest thing she'd ever heard. "A bear? Get real."

The officers seemed to dismiss them from their minds after that, which was a good thing since he'd noticed Slade beginning to size them up as if he expected some kind of trouble. And, it seemed like whenever Slade expected trouble, whoever he expected trouble _from_ ended up in small, bloody pieces. It was just best not to walk into those kinds of situations in the first place.

"So, how'd it go?" Jake asked, trying not to think about the debacle at Ocean World that had ended up with two guards lying dead on the concrete.

Once had really been more than enough.

"We encountered no difficulties, Prince Jake," Ax said, falling into step with the rest of them as they made their way out of the building.

"Yeah, no problem," Marco said, though for some weird reason he seemed to be really, honestly disturbed; either that or he was putting on a hell of an act.

"So, what's the matter?" he asked, wanting to make sure that Marco was all right with the rest of their plan; or that he was all right in general, really.

"No biggie," Marco said, shrugging though he still looked like he didn't really believe what he was saying. "Once we got into the mainframe, it was a breeze. Total cakewalk. We had plenty of time, so I figured, why not check out one or two extra screen-names while we were there."

"Not exactly the reason we came," Tobias said, not looking particularly sympathetic.

"This girl whose screen-name is PrtyGirl802," Marco said, clearly attempting to explain himself as they stood at the bus stop waiting. "She sends me these very flirty kind of e-mails and IM messages. You know; like she likes me and all."

"So, you found out who she is?" Cassie asked. "That's not very nice."

"Yeah, no kidding," Marco said, giving a shudder that was just exaggerated enough to clearly be faked. "I found out that my online girlfriend PrtyGirl802 is actually a seventy-three-year-old retired postal worker."

"How is _that_ important?" Slade asked as they all climbed aboard, having been aware of the conversation, just as he was aware of everything that happened around his allies, whether it directly affected them or not.

"It's not, actually," Shara said, laughing softly, paying her fee as the eight of them paid their fare and found seats close together. "It's just funny."

Marco and Slade both looked over at her, but Slade was the only one who spoke: "Why is it funny?"

"It's not important," Jake said, silencing both siblings before Shara could make a game attempt at explaining humor to someone who no longer thought entirely like a human. "Right now, we have to concentrate on the list Marco printed up."


	22. Working from Memory

All eight of the Animorphs studied the list, most of them picking out names that were of interest to them, zeroing in on those that they recognized. Slade, however, took in the entire list; not knowing which of the names he was being presented with would be a help or a hindrance to his leader and his allies later, Slade opted to memorize them all.

"No way," Marco said, pointing to a name that had leaped out at most of them once they'd seen it: Fitey777; Joe Bob Fenestre. "That guy hangs out in _chat rooms_? If I were him, I'd spend _my_ day rolling around in big stacks of hundred-dollar bills, paying Michael Jordan to come over and teach me how to improve my three-point shot-"

"You _have_ no three-point shot, Marco," Jake pointed out, lips beginning to curl upwards.

"-and having the female cast members of _Baywatch_ apply suntan oil to my muscular body," Marco concluded, his momentum not broken at all.

"So you'd have bought some muscles, too, huh?" Rachel asked, glancing over at him from her place next to Shara. "Didn't know you could do _that_."

It was kind of funny seeing them together like that, Jake mused; they were both about the same height, though Shara was clearly a few years older, both of them had the same color hair, though Shara's was a bit paler, and both of them had that same, willowy look to them. They could have easily passed for sisters, if not for Shara's eyes, and the differences in their facial-structures.

"When you count your money in billions, you can buy anything," Marco said, drawing his attention back to the conversation at hand; such as it was. "Including happiness. Assuming that your idea of happiness involves a private jet, supermodels, and your own Papa John's pizza restaurant in the basement."

"Be sure to leave your brain to science when you die, Marco," Rachel said, smiling. "After all, they're the ones with the microscopes it'd take to _find_ it."

Jake laughed, and he could hear some of the others - Shara in particular - laughing with him. _He_ was the one that Marco looked at, however, cocking an eyebrow at him as if Jake had just betrayed him.

"Sorry," Jake said, with an unrepentant shrug. "But _that_ round goes to Rachel."

Their bus pulled up to the airport just as he'd finished saying that, and Jake waited with the others as the remaining people got off. No sense risking separation when they could just wait. When the rest of the people had left, Jake lead the other Animorphs out of the bus.

He was beginning to get slightly nervous, not so much for himself as for Shara. He knew that, if something happened when they were all in fly morph, that she would risk her own life to save him just the way she'd done on their flight out here. Or, alternately, Slade would end up demorphing and wreaking havoc in an effort to get to him.

Either way, it would be bad; either for the other people on the plane with them, or for one of the seven others that Jake had taken it upon himself to protect. They were _his_ people, after all, and his friends. He _should_ be able to protect them.

By the time they had gotten inside the airport itself, and Slade had begun to tense up from the sheer sensory-overload he was being subjected to, Jake had taken to sneaking glances at Shara when he knew that she wasn't looking. He knew very well that he couldn't just order her not to dive into his mind if he got swatted again.

The fact that she wouldn't listen to him aside, thinking about their two minds connecting like that was a bit unsettling. Shara knew things about him now, things that he hadn't wanted anyone else to know. But she knew _that_, too, and Jake knew that she would keep his secrets without him having to ask.


	23. Put up and put out

She seemed to be holding up better than Slade was in all the noise, but Jake knew now that that was only out of a desire to prove to herself that she was still human in spite of everything that Darkon had done to her. He knew now that she struggled with the same urges that Slade did; feeling as if she was surrounded by enemies and constantly suppressing the urge to slaughter them all. Teknomen, even Hunters like her, were instruments of war; meant to break the will of a planet's populace as they descended from on high to attack.

Still, Jake knew that Shara was strong enough to reign in the destructive urges she was now subject to; he just didn't know about Slade.

"You know, maybe we should try a different morph on the way home," Cassie said suddenly, though she tried to sound nonchalant about it.

"Why?" Ax asked, even as Jake turned to look at Cassie.

She must have thought he was worried about Shara, and she was probably worrying about them both if the expression on her face was any indication. Jake was grateful, but he also didn't know how to dissuade her without talking about things that Shara might want left unsaid.

"I don't know," she said, a slight tension in the lines of her mouth. "It might be fun to do things a different way this time, that's all."

"We already went over it before," Rachel said, clearly trying to be reasonable. "We decided the fly morph would work best, right? I mean, just because Jake and Shara had a bad experience, that doesn't mean the idea itself is bad."

"I don't really mind," Shara said, joining the conversation for the first time. "It was kind of fun being a fly."

He chuckled. "Fly morph is fine," he said, ignoring the look that Cassie gave him after he said that. "It's still the best way to do this."

"Hey, Jake?" Cassie said, smiling at him in a way that even he could tell was faked. "Come buy me a pretzel, okay? I'm hungry." Grabbing his arm to keep him close, Cassie called back over her shoulder. "Shara, why don't you come with us? I bet you're hungry, too, right?"

"Yeah," Shara said, following along. "I definitely think I could use some food."

"That was subtle, Cassie," he said, once the three of them were out of earshot of the others; even Slade's, though that took a bit longer. "I don't actually have anymore money."

"You want me to pick _you_ up a pretzel if I have extra?"

"Thanks for the offer, Shara," he said, knowing that her hunger was starting to get to her; she wasn't showing any signs, but with what he'd picked up from her mind, he knew she wouldn't have in any case. "But I'm not really hungry right now."

"What is the _matter_ with you two?" Cassie demanded, after Shara had left and come back with a large, soft pretzel. "Neither of you two have to do this! There's no reason for you to try to prove how tough you are!"

"It's not a problem, Cassie, really," he said, as Shara tore into her pretzel with a vigor not seen in many people. "Thanks for your concern, but let it go, okay?"

"Jake, you and Shara may have the others fooled, but not me," Cassie said, once Shara had finished with the last bites of her food. "You both have good reasons to be scared, so what's the big deal?"

"Radam instincts don't really allow for fear," Shara muttered absently, picking the remains of the salt from her pretzel's wrapping.

"What does _that_ mean?" Cassie asked, turning quickly to face Shara.

"It means that I should watch what I say," Shara responded, after a brief, rueful chuckle.

"It's no big deal, Cassie," Jake said, just as Cassie looked like she was about to start gently interrogating Shara about what shed let slip. Come on; we should get back to the others. They're probably wondering whats taken us so long.

For a few, long seconds, it looked like Cassie was going to stay on the topic; like she wanted to know exactly what Shara had been talking about. She let it drop, though, which was really for the best since Shara wasn't likely to have answered her in any case. Thinking about what Darkon had done to her wasn't something that she enjoyed, he know; and she would avoid it whenever possible.

As they all made their way back to the airport, him keeping a discreet eye on Shara when he could, Jake hoped again that all of them were going to get through this leg of the journey all right. Not so much for himself as for Shara. She was dealing with enough problems in her life; he didn't want to be the one responsible for adding to them.


	24. Return Trip

Slade was just as tense on their way through the airport as he had been during the first and second times he'd been there, but Jake knew that that was a problem that any Teknoman would have. Even Shara, though she tried to hide it for various reasons.

Once they were all in fly morph aboard the plane, Jake allowed himself to relax slightly. Now that he didn't have to worry about either Slade or Shara snapping and killing most of the people in the airport, he could focus more on keeping out of the way of any swatting hands so that Shara wouldn't feel the need to come to his rescue the way she had. It wasn't good for her to think that she was the one who had to risk herself to protect him; if anything, it really should have been the other way around.

When they all made it back to their hometown without any unpleasant hitches, Jake breathed a soft sigh of relief. Metaphorically, of course, since he and all of the others were still in their fly morphs at this point, but the relief he felt wasn't diminished a bit.

They demorphed, regrouped, and made their way out of the terminal without incident, and Jake was grateful for the reprieve since it allowed him to relax from the state of breathless high-alert he'd been in ever since they'd gotten on the plane for home. It also allowed him to subtly check on Shara again.

She seemed to be doing as well as she ever did, though she looked a lot better when they got out of the airport terminal and away from the accompanying wall of noise. He was glad for that, especially since he knew now how bad it was for both her and Slade. Jake wished for a moment that he knew something he could do for her, but there was nothing he could think of.

At least, nothing that didn't involve the Animorphs carrying around earplugs all the time on the off-chance that they ended up somewhere that overwhelmed Slade and Shara's enhanced senses. And that wouldn't work out for various reasons, including the security that they all had to concern themselves with if they were going to be able to continue their fight against the Yeerks.

So, a bit reluctantly but determinedly all the same, Jake put those thoughts aside. They were far enough away from the airport that they could morph safely at this point, and soon all of them were in their seagull morphs except Tobias. Taking off with the others, Jake flapped his way into the air with them.

The seagull mind was a bit cranky about the presence of Tobias' hawk, but it was soon distracted by the massive amounts of trash on the streets and sidewalks. Jake barely paid attention to what his seagull mind was doing, only intervening when the urge to dive on a particularly tasty-looking morsel came up, and focused most of his attention on getting home.

He knew that Tom would be there, and thus he wouldn't be able to completely relax, but there had never really been a time that he could relax since this whole war started, so he was used to it. Besides, a leader could never _really_ relax, especially when they were leading the only resistance against not one but _two_ groups of ruthless aliens out to conquer the planet. Especially when one of those groups employed engineered super-soldiers in their plans, and the other could mimic the person they had taken over so completely that even their own family would be fooled by the deception.

Jake was exhausted by the time he made it back to his house, and while he was sorely tempted to just fly in through the window and demorph in bed, he knew that there was no way that he would ever be able to explain how he'd just appeared in the house like that. So, he demorphed in the bushes outside, quickly pulling on the clothes that he'd stashed there when he'd morphed.


	25. Runaround

Brushing the clinging bits of foliage aside as he made his way to the door, Jake took a few breaths to try to calm himself. He knew what he'd be facing when he walked through the door, and he didn't want to give himself or the others away by reacting badly. When he made his way into the kitchen, he found Tom there talking on the phone while he covered a graham cracker with peanut butter.

When the Controller who'd once been his brother had noticed Jake coming, he'd changed his tone of voice. In the old days, before he knew what his brother had become, Jake would have figured that he was talking to a girl or something. Now, he suspected that Tom had been speaking to one of his fellow Controllers.

Knowing that there was nothing he could do, and that wishing things were different wouldn't help the situation in the least, Jake forced himself not to think about it. Opening the fridge, Jake took out some leftover barbequed chicken, and some mashed potatoes, piled them onto the plate he was carrying, and made his way over to the microwave to cook them.

"I gotta go," Tom said to the person on the other end of the line, quickly hanging up.

"What's up?" Jake asked, deliberately casual.

"Nada," Tom said in almost the same tone, leaving the room as quickly as Jake had come.

Sighing, briefly looking at the path his older brother had taken, Jake shook his head; now wasn't the time for regrets. Taking his food up to his room once it had finished cooking, Jake settled down at his desk. Briefly setting his plate aside, he leaned over the 'power' button of his computer; his finger hovered indecisively for a few moments, before Jake decided that he needed a bit more time to think. Sitting back up in his seat, Jake picked up one of the pieces of chicken that he'd served for himself and began to eat it.

Shuffling through the various bits of information that he and the others had gathered. Finding out that Joe Bob Fenestre himself hung out in the chat room that they'd discovered only a few days ago could mean one of several things, not all of them good. Still, when they'd read what he'd had to say about what he was doing, he'd sounded genuine.

Not like that YrkH8er guy, who'd either been some kind of idiot or the world's least subtle Controller.

Still, it wasn't nearly that simple in practice: Joe Bob Fenestre had complete access to all of WAA's user information. All of the data that was entered into the system was open to him; he knew who the people behind the screen names were, and he would even know just who had been the one to set up the Yeerk home page in the first place.

Joe Bob Fenestre had created and still owned the biggest online service in the country; he was definitely in a position of power, someone that the Yeerks would want. It _was_ possible that he'd actually discovered the existence of the Yeerk invasion and escaped somehow. But then, it was also just as possible that he'd been infested and that this who setup with the web page was a trap.

All of which meant that he still had no idea what, exactly, what any of them were going to be faced with. It was possible that Fenestre was an enemy of the Yeerks, using the web page and its associated chat room to rally a resistance to the Yeerks' efforts. But, it was still just as possible that he'd already been captured and made a Controller, and this whole setup with the website could be an elaborate hoax to lure in the people who had somehow found out the truth behind the Yeerk invasion so that they could be infested.

Either way, they needed to know more. He should go over to Marco's house and get him to pull up all the information he could about Joe Bob Fenestre. Jake knew that he couldn't have lived too far out of town, since the little information that _he_ had managed to gather about the man stated that he flew his private jet to the WAA office every day.

By this time, after all he'd done that day, Jake felt like he was running on fumes; like he could sleep for a week and still be tired. He couldn't, though; weekends were the best time for the Animorphs to carry out their missions. And tomorrow was Sunday, the last day that they would all have free to do so.

For a moment, Jake considered asking Slade, Shara and Tobias if they would mind taking care of this mission while Jake himself got some much-needed sleep. It was kind of a funny idea, but Jake didn't let himself honestly consider it. It wouldn't be fair to ask them to do something like that alone, extra free time or not.

Trudging downstairs, trying to make himself act like this was just one more normal day, Jake wanted for about half a second to just drop the act, but he knew that he couldn't; more than his own life depended on it.


	26. Family Time

His parents were just getting home, carrying shopping bags so it was obvious where the two of them had been.

"Hey, Jake," his father greeted cheerfully; Jake nodded back, working up the same expression.

"Honey, there are some more bags out in the car," his mother said, gesturing back outside with her head.

"Right," he said, turning to head for the door.

After he'd taken care of all of the bags that had been left in the car, setting them down in the living room so that his parents could take care of them, Jake turned back to them. There were some things that were more important than playing at being normal, after all.

"I'm going to take off," he said.

"Weren't you out all day?" his mom asked, giving him a sort of reproving look; Jake ignored it for the most part.

"I guess so," he said, shrugging.

"Would it kill you to have dinner with your family?" she asked; Jake held back a wince through sheer force of will.

Guilt was the one thing he didn't have much of a defense against. "Is it dinnertime?"

"It will be, as soon as I fix that salmon I picked up yesterday," she said, smiling kindly down at him. "You loved it so much the last time I made it, so I mostly got it for you."

Smiling widely to help himself ignore the guild gnawing away at the pit of his stomach, Jake sighed under his breath. "Well, you didn't tell me _that's_ what you were making. Marco can wait. I'm there."

There was no real way that he could let Marco know what he was doing, or to ask him to do the research that Jake so obviously wasn't going to be able to in time. Something like this was too sensitive to be talked about over the phone, and they all tried to avoid using the phone for things like this in any case.

Phones were too easy to tap, and in his case it was entirely _too_ likely that Tom could be listening in on the extension, just waiting for him to slip up; anyone else might have called that excessive paranoia on his part, but no one else had to deal with the kind of pressure that he had to deal with constantly.

Pulling out some of his homework when he got back up to his room, Jake started on it while his mother cooked and his father most likely set out the dishes. Either with or without Tom's help, Jake wasn't entirely sure these days. Hearing his father calling up to him from the living room, something about a fight that was being broadcast on Showtime, something about it being a repeat of one that his father had enjoyed from Pay Per View. So, knowing that it was something that _he_ would have done back in the old days, and hence something that would be expected of him under the circumstances, Jake grabbed his homework and headed back down to the living room.

He worked on it there, under the eyes of his mother and father, keeping one eye on the screen just in case anything interesting happened. It didn't, not really, but it was still nice to spend time with the people he loved. Even if the four of them hadn't _really_ been a family since Tom had been infested by the Yeerks, it was still nice; _this_ was really what he fought for.

His father started to get into some long, involved, really boring story about what had happened while he was at work, then his mother asked him and Tom about how their respective days at school had gone, and _then_ his father remembered that there had been some part of his story that he hadn't gotten around to telling, so he had to go back over it again. And his mother hoped aloud that he and Tom enjoyed the clothes she had bought for them at the mall, and he and Tom - or at least the thing that was _pretending_ to be Tom - joked that she had probably been shopping at Formerly Cool Fashions 'R' Us. It was an old joke between the three of them, something that had become comfortably familiar.

Something that he had to play along with for the sake of his cover, now.

Everything was all so normal-seeming that Jake could almost let himself believe that it was real. He could almost let himself believe that there weren't layers of deception here, layers that he couldn't let anyone else know that he'd penetrated, and that he couldn't let anyone else penetrate. Could almost believe that the fate of his family didn't rest on his own acting skills.

Times like this, lately, Jake would find himself thinking about Slade and Shara, hidden away as they were inside Cassie's barn. He wondered what _they_ fought for; or really what _Shara_ fought for, since Slade didn't seem to have any ambitions beyond just following orders. He wondered what their family had been like, and if they had had moments like these. They probably had, since any family but the most messed-up ones did.

He wondered what Shara thought about, when she was eating whatever food Cassie prepared for her in a drafty barn, instead of sitting down at a table with the rest of her family. Did she have more brothers than just Ness and Cain, back when she'd had them at all? Did she think about them, and plan ways that she might be able to rescue them from the Radam?

He hadn't ever thought of her this much before, but after she had basically shared her mind with him, giving him just the barest glimpse of her innermost thoughts and feelings as she had tried to help keep him steady while the others worked to save both their lives, he couldn't help but wonder just what kind of a person Shara Carter had been. He couldn't really look in yearbooks for that, since they wouldn't have the kind of information that he was interested in.

He knew better than most just how little normal people _really_ tended to see.


	27. What you fight for

"You've been awfully quiet over there, Jake," his mother said gently, smiling at him. "Thinking deep thoughts?"

He smiled; not entirely happily, but he hoped that no one really noticed how reflective he was being. "I was just thinking that this is really cool, you know? We should all have dinner together more often," he looked over at Tom, fighting to keep what he was _really_ feeling from showing on his face at that moment. "It was nice. I hope that nothing ever happens to us. I hope we'll always be together."

It took only a few moments for the Yeerk in his older brother's head to pick the right thing to say; only a few moments for that thing to violate his older brother's mind and pick out the words that would let him keep his cover for one more day: "Hey, Mom, no more tiramisu for Jake. The liqueur is making him mushy."

Laughing along with the rest of his family, knowing very well that he had his _own_ cover to maintain if he was going to keep the people around him safe, Jake made his own, personal vow. It was almost the same one that Shara had made, he knew now: _Your time will come, Yeerk. I promise you, I'll see you dead for what you've done to my family._

Once their meal was finished, he and the rest of his family all went their separate ways, with Jake heading up to his room to see if he could gather at least _some_ information on the Fenestre mansion before he and the others tried to infiltrate it tomorrow. However, he found that he was tired to the point where he could barely think about anything besides how much he really, really wanted to sleep.

Climbing into bed, knowing even as he did that he might come to regret this decision tomorrow when the Animorphs were trying to carry out their mission, Jake still couldn't muster the resolve to get out of bed and do the research that he had volunteered to. He know, though, that whatever happened tomorrow would be on _his_ head.

XXX

When he woke up the next morning, having had an actual good night's sleep for once, Jake didn't let himself dwell on just how rare that kind of an occurrence had become for him. Instead, he got out of bed and started going about his morning routine. He and the others had a lot of things to do if they were going to be able to infiltrate the Fenestre mansion to find out if Joe Bob was a legitimate ally or not.

And, if he turned out to be, just how they were going to explain the threat of the Radam to him.

Once he was cleaned up, and feeling all the more awake for it, Jake headed down for breakfast. While he was sitting there, eating with his parents and the Yeerk passing itself off as Tom, Jake told the usual half-truth about meeting up with Marco to do some stuff that he tended to use when the Animorphs had a mission.

For a moment he thought of Shara, and wondered what she would have told her father if the two of them had still been living together during the course of this war. Then, deciding that something like that wasn't really what he was supposed to be concentrating on at the moment, Jake left his house. He was on foot, since he didn't want to risk having his bike stolen when he left the road to morph. The old clothes he was wearing were another story; sure, it would be better for his cover if he could get them back when he returned from this mission, but if he lost them then it wasn't too big of a deal.

Ducking out of the line-of-sight of any of the houses on his block, Jake checked for any observers and then climbed the thick, leafy branches of a fairly tall tree. Stripping down to his morphing outfit, Jake rolled up his outer clothes and tucked them as snugly as he could between a pair of branches. Morphing quickly, Jake ran and took off from the branch he'd been sitting on in his human form.

Breathing more easily once he'd gotten into the air, Jake oriented himself and made for Cassie's barn with all the speed he could manage. There was a lot he had to do today, particularly since he hadn't managed to get any research done last night. He hoped that that wasn't going to cause any of them _too_ much trouble, but even small favors like that were probably too much to ask for.

As he left the close-packed houses of suburbia behind, Jake tried to ignore the input from the falcon's mind. There were tons of small animals just wandering around below him, and even after all this time the mind of the Peregrine Falcon he currently was wanted to swoop down and catch one. To drive his talons into soft, yielding flesh and gorge himself on sweet meat.

As with all the other times he'd been forced to deal with the instinctive urges of one of his morphs, Jake pushed it aside so that he could concentrate. Winging his way over to Cassie's barn, surrounded as it was by open fields and woods, made Jake have to push a bit harder against the mental wall that he'd made to separate himself from the falcon's mind while he flew. Finally landing on the ground-floor of the barn, Jake shed his morph and regained his human form with a definite feeling of relief.

"Hey, Jake," Cassie greeted him with a smile, holding a pitchfork in her hands as she used it to move dirty hay into a neat pile in the corner of the barn.

"Hi, Cassie," he said, smiling softly. "I'd offer to help, but I think it would be best if I got some shoes on, first."

Cassie laughed softly when he said that, and Jake left to find the extra shoes that Rachel had bought for each of them to use when they arrived at the barn in their various morphs. Suiting actions to his earlier words, Jake made his way back over to where Cassie was standing, picking up the spare pitchfork on his way over. The two of them fell into a steady routine, as the others arrived one-by-one; or, in the case of Shara and Slade, were persuaded to come down from the hayloft so they could all talk about what they were going to do.


	28. Moving Forward

"All right," he said, gaining the attention of the rest of the Animorphs as he set the pitchfork he'd been using against the far wall of the barn next to where Cassie had put hers. "Now that we've all had a bit of time to rest, I think it would be best if we discussed what we're going to do, next."

"I think it would be best if we all talked about this out in the woods," Marco said, looking completely serious; it was a testament to the seriousness of the mission itself, Jake knew. "Less chance of anyone walking in on us out there, at least without one or more of us spotting them. Besides, some of us don't blend in so well."

"All right," Jake said, after having looked to the rest of his friends for confirmation; he knew that Marco was right, but he didn't want to overrule any of the others if they might have had a valid objection. No one offered any. "Bird morphs, everyone."

Concentrating on his own Peregrine Falcon, Jake turned away just as the others began to take on strange and horrifying shapes. Cassie, and for some odd reason Shara, were really the only ones who could make the process of morphing turn out as anything other than a complete horrorshow. With Cassie, that kind of thing could probably be chalked up to how good she was with animals, but in Shara's case he didn't really know what to think.

Ax would have probably had something to say about that, if Jake could have made sense of the Andalite's explanation.

Once the eight of them had fully morphed into their various bird forms, something that Jake turned back to them to check once he'd stopped hearing the sounds of flesh and bones being crunched, melted, and reshaped, all of them went about getting themselves in the air. That kind of thing was a bit difficult for some of them, him included, since some of their wings were built with more of an eye toward gliding than flapping.

But, soon enough all of them were in the air, and making their way towards a small clearing in the woods at the edge of Cassie's property. The clearing itself was well-hidden enough that they couldn't be observed from the outside, and had tall enough trees that Tobias would be able to see anyone coming up on them from the outside long before any of them had to worry about that kind of thing.

Landing along with the rest of the Animorphs, Jake began his demorph just as his falcon's talons touched the ground. The extra weight he gained as his human body emerged kept him from skidding or toppling over from the sudden loss of momentum, and Jake breathed in deeply with his becoming-human lungs to steady himself after the flight. Once he could no longer hear the sounds of morphing behind him, Jake turned around to see that the others were all finished with their own demorphs as well.

He also saw Slade yawning, but that wasn't really important.

"All right, so since you've been working on finding out what we can expect when we infiltrate the Fenestre mansion," Marco said, making Jake feel a pang of guilt for the fact that he hadn't actually done that. "I headed back to that chat room to see if what'd we'd seen was out of the ordinary, or if it was part of some kind of a pattern." Marco paused for a moment, taking a couple breaths, and then continued. "Most of the same people were there; there _were_ a few new names, but GoVikes, YrkH8er, Chazz, Carlito CKDsweet, YeerKiller, MegMom, and Gump8293 were all there. The Gump kid was still talking about his dad. I get the feeling he might be working up to a confrontation with his father."

"We can't let that happen," Cassie said; Jake suppressed a wince, knowing as well as she did what would happen to anyone who confronted a Controller with knowledge of the Yeerks.

Anyone who wasn't either an Animorph or a Teknoman, at least.

"Gump is a nine-year-old kid," Jake reminded everyone in the group; particularly himself. "He lives close enough that we could do something without having to dedicate a whole weekend to it. Meg, Chazz, and CKDsweet all live outside of town; some of them live _way_ out of town. That only leaves us with GoVikes-"

"An idiot," Rachel interjected; Jake heard Shara chuckle, but ignored it after a moment.

"YrkH8er, Gump, Carlito, and of course, Fitey777," he continued, completing his interrupted sentence.


	29. Flying free

(YrkH8er is a Controller, right?) Tobias asked, almost sounding like it was a rhetorical question. (I mean, that's what he acts like: like a Controller trying to pass himself off as an enemy of the Yeerks.)

"Not necessarily," Shara said, turning to look at where Tobias had landed, ten fee above their heads. "According to Hanlon's Razor, he _could_ just be incredibly mistaken, and too overconfident or insecure to admit it."

"YrkH8er is someone named Edward Cheltingham," Cassie said, tilting her head slightly back and forth as if she wasn't entirely sure what to think. "What was he, thirty years old? But, you know what? I looked in the phone book this morning, and there was no Edward Cheltingham. There were only two people with that name listed, and both of them were female."

"So? He must have an unlisted phone number," Rachel said.

"Maybe so," Cassie allowed. "Or, maybe Edward Cheltingham is as phony a name as YrkH8er. Isn't it possible to get a fake ID and a credit card in some name and then open up a WAA account?"

"Let's not borrow trouble we don't need," Shara said calmly, even as Jake mentally berated himself for not having thought of something like that.

It _was_ entirely possible for someone to do something like that, and the only one out of any of them who'd even bothered to _consider_ the possibility was Cassie. Feeling someone gently bump his right arm, Jake looked over to see Shara giving him a solemn look. Smiling slightly at the other girl's concern, Jake took a breath and let it out slowly.

She was right: it was _done_, it had _happened_; what he had to do now was look to the future, and the mission they were all undertaking.

"We have an address for him. We could check _that_ out," Cassie said, then she gave Jake a significant look. "We also have an address for Gump."

"Gump isn't the point, here," Marco said firmly. "Fenestre is the man at the middle of all this. He's the main man. We figure out what's up with _him_, we figure everything out."

"Maybe," Cassie said, not sounding particularly convinced. "But, he can wait. Gump may be in trouble right _now_."

"Look, Cassie, it's Sunday now," Marco said, clearly trying to be patient even though he was starting to look a bit annoyed. "If we go after Fenestre, it's probably going to take some time. Which means a weekend, which means today. We can go check out Gump anytime we want. Monday, Tuesday; any day of the week."

"Unless Monday is already too late," Cassie said. "Unless later today that scared little kid talks to his dad, and his dad is a Controller, and that's it for Gump. Then Gump does a disappearing act, or else ends up as the new host to some low-level Yeerk."

When Cassie and Marco both looked to him, both of them clearly expecting him to take a side, Jake had to fight down the urge to either fidget or sigh. Shara subtly nudged him, shoulder-to-shoulder, and then Jake had to suppress a smile. None of the others would have understood it, but he was glad for the support all the same. Still, this was a decision that only he could really make.

"Marco, did you happen to do any research on Fenestre's mansion?" Jake asked, subtly nudging Shara in the same way she'd done for him; letting her know that he acknowledged her support and was grateful for it.

"No," Marco said, with a shake of his head. "I thought _you_ were going to do it."

"I kind of got held up," and this time, Jake _did_ sigh, just a bit. "Big family thing."

"It's supposed to have massive security," Marco said, with a brief, hard look at Jake. "Lost of computerized stuff. But that shouldn't be much of a problem for any of us. I mean, security is designed to keep out _humans_, right? Not animals."

Nodding, hoping that Marco had his facts straight but still feeling a twinge of uneasiness all the same, Jake committed himself to this task. Marco was right: Fenestre was the centerpoint, the lynchpin of this whole thing. If they found out what was going on with him, then they could find out what was really going on with that website about the Yeerks.

"Cassie," he said, turning to give his fellow Animorph a reassuring look. "First thing after school tomorrow, we'll check up on Gump."

Cassie nodded, but the look on her face was bitter. "I hope that's going to be soon enough."

"Yeah, me too. Okay," he said, rubbing his hands together, winking at Rachel in a cocky sort of way, and putting on the "game face" that he had developed for just these sorts of missions. "Let's do it, then. Let's go see how the superrich live. Bird morphs, everybody. This is going to be a long trip."

As he saw the others turning away from each other, so no one was in anyone else's direct line of sight, Jake noticed for the first time that Slade wasn't bothering with that. Of course it was possible, given what Slade was now, that seeing people morphing in front of him didn't affect Slade the same way as it did a normal person.

Shaking his head briefly as he turned his attention to his own morph, Jake focused on the falcon that he was becoming. The unease that he'd been feeling was still just as strong as it had ever been, but that was probably just because he'd never lead the others on a mission quite this big, before. Even going into the Yeerk Pool those times they'd done it usually involved their battle morphs.

This was going to be different, they weren't going to be going into this man's house looking for a fight; they might _find_ one, considering all the missions that had ended up in battle, but they weren't going in looking for it. That changed the equation, so that was probably why he was feeling a bit unsettled at the moment. Nothing to worry about; just jitters.

(Are you doing all right?) Cassie asked, and when he looked over at her he found that all of the others had finished morphing while he'd been thinking.

(I'm fine,) he said, shuffling aside the uneasiness that he'd found the source of and hence didn't have to worry about. (Just got a little lost in thought. Let's get going.)

There was a short round of affirmatives, during which Jake could still feel Cassie's eyes on him, but he put _that _out of his mind as well, concentrating on his takeoff so he could join up with the others in the air.

It might not have been one of the longest flights they'd ever taken, with no real way to keep track of time he didn't have a way to measure them against each other – and no real interest in doing so, besides – but it was certainly among one of the most enjoyable. There were massive thermals on their way to Fenestre's mansion, so he and the others were able to thermal-surf on their way there. It was a great experience, and even with him having to block out input from the instincts of the falcon he'd morphed, Jake loved the feel of the air under his wings.

Whatever else happened in this life he had now, Jake knew that he would always love flying.

As they all continued on their way, the eight of them flying at various heights and distances so it wouldn't look like they were all together – since birds like them didn't flock together, and some of them even competed for food and territory – Jake began to see the Fenestre mansion coming into view.

It was huge; more on the order of a junior college or a shopping center than someplace that someone might actually _live_. There were at least a dozen separate buildings that Jake could pick out from his position: a pair of guest houses that were each larger than his own, a pool house with changing-rooms and a bar that extended out to the pool itself, the pool in the shape of the WAA logo, a boathouse down on the riverfront with a sleek speedboat docked alongside, a stable big enough to house a good-sized herd of horses, what he thought looked like an observatory, a green house practically bursting with healthy-looking lettuce and herbs and entire orange trees, a garage that looked easily big enough to store thirty or forty cars, a security building with armed guards next to a driveway a quarter-mile long, and finally, up on a hill and surrounded by a lawn that could have easily hosted the Superbowl, was Fenestre's mansion.

(This guy _definitely_ knows how to live,) Marco said, after a few moments of silence as they had all taken the scene in. (Someday, that'll be _me_.)

(Who'll be you?) Rachel asked, in a tone that was just slightly too sweet. (The guy mowing the lawn down there?)


	30. Arial Surveillance

(What do you guys think he's got in that garage?) Tobias wondered, clearly getting into the spirit of things. (Ferraris? Porsches? Jaguars? Vipers?)

(He might have an Aston Martin or two,) Shara said, sounding like she'd have been smiling if she was human.

(Ooh, James Bond's car,) Marco said, chuckling appreciatively. (I think you just might be onto something there, Shara. I do know one thing, though: no way does he have minivans and Volvo station wagons in there. Might have a few Rolls Royces.)

As they all continued to scan the grounds of the Fenestre compound for anything that might prove to be a danger to them and the mission they were about to commence, Jake noted that the unease he'd had going into this mission was almost entirely gone. That was pretty normal, though, considering that he was flying. Nothing ever seemed as bad as it might be when he was flying.

At the same time, though, Jake was also taking careful note of the security on Fenestre's compound and around the mansion itself. There were three fences that he could see: one around the perimeter of the compound, a second fence about twenty yards inside of the first one, and a third around the mansion itself. But, considering everything _else_ he was seeing, the fences were really the _least_ of it.

(This guy's just a bit paranoid, isn't he?) Rachel observed, a wry tone to her silent voice. (You guys see those little observation posts on the corners of the house? There are guys in there. Guys with guns.)

(And don't forget about the Rottweilers,) Cassie pointed out. (Two teams of two dogs each, patrolling between the outer fence and the second fence. Each team with an armed man.)

(Colonel Hogan would never get out of _this_ place,) Jake muttered, feeling a definite sense of satisfaction when both Marco and Tobias laughed. He was a bit surprised when _Shara_ did, though. (I guess now we know who watches _Hogan's Heroes_ reruns on _Nick at Nite_.)

(There's some sort of underwater fence, too,) Cassie reported, before any of them could get too off-topic. (I can't see all of it, but there's a definite line beneath the water.)

(Is this human in great danger?) Ax wondered, clearly bewildered by the massive of security he was seeing in this one place.

(Nah,) Marco said nonchalantly. (That's just the way rich people are.)

(Okay, so now how do we get into this place?) he asked, calling all of their attention to the new problem that they were all going to have to deal with if they were going to complete this mission. (Anyone have any brilliant ideas?)

(Fly right in through an open window,) Tobias suggested, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. (There's one on the back side of the house.)

(Then what?) Cassie asked practically. (We need to be able to move around in there. Find Mr. Fenestre's office, maybe. And we need to be able to overhear what's going on.)

(We could do flies again,) Marco suggested.

(We could do ants, too,) Cassie said, actually sounding like she was taking a shot at Marco; Jake wondered why for a moment, before realizing what Marco's own practicality probably sounded like to her.

(And for those of us who don't actually _have_ ant morphs?) Shara asked, clearly curious but also needling Cassie just a bit.

(Sorry,) Cassie said, sounding like she _was_ actually genuinely apologetic; to Shara, at least.

(Okay, first of all, we need to go in like Tobias said,) he said, cutting in and drawing all of their attention back to the mission at hand. (Only Tobias stays outside and uses his eyes and ears to report what he sees through the other windows. Inside, half of use morph to fly, and the other half to cockroach; we'll spread out and keep in touch. Slade and Shara both pick a group to go with, so even if we end up getting out of thought-speak range, we'll still be able to stay in contact. Anyone finds Fenestre, they call the others. All right?)

(Let's do it!) Rachel called enthusiastically, already tucking her wings in for a dive.


	31. Lone Warrior

The others weren't quite so enthusiastic with their affirmatives, but they all tucked in their wings and dove just the same. Cassie was about twenty feet behind Rachel on the same trajectory, Jake himself was about ten feet behind _her_, then Marco, Shara and Ax, then Slade last of all. Tobias, for his part, adjusted his wings and caught an updraft that sent him higher up, up to a level where he would be able to observe what was going on inside the estate with a great deal more ease than he'd done before.

Rachel was falling fast, but with his falcon morph, Jake was closing the distance between the two of them fairly quickly. _The Bald Eagle hasn't been born that could out-dive a Peregrine Falcon,_ Jake thought with some satisfaction. Rachel flared then, bringing her talons up to kill more of her speed, and sailed in through the open window.

Unfortunately, even _that_ didn't go the way he'd been planning it in his head when he'd decided how to handle this mission: a sudden burst of electricity from something in the window sent Rachel tumbling to the ground.

(Break off!) he shouted, knowing that he had to save as many of his people as he could, now; something had gone wrong, and he _was_ going to find out what, but for now all he could really focus on was damage-control. (Cassie, everyone, break off!)

Cassie was quick enough that she only skimmed over the surface of the wall, just inches away from the rough stucco that covered it. But, everyone else was pretty much all right. He was about to call out to Shara, to tell her not to do what he knew that she would be thinking of doing, when Shara's bird morph, something he _still_ hadn't had the time to ask Cassie about, went shooting past them.

(Shara! Shara, get back here!)

XXX

She could hear Jake calling out to her, and even some of the others doing the same when they realized what was going on, but she wasn't going to be stopped. Rachel was unconscious in potentially hostile territory, and while the others might have had to be cautious, Shara knew that she could afford a bit more leeway considering what she was. Controllers weren't that much of a threat to her; only one of her own kind could really make _that_ claim, and one of her friends was in danger.

She wasn't going to let that stand; not while she could do something about it.

Already beginning her demorph as she fell through the window, Shara felt her left wing go briefly numb as she passed into the interior of the house. She'd been aiming for a point opposite where Rachel had made her own dive, wanting to avoid the sting of what she had seen was some kind of a bug-zapper, and while she was a bit surprised to find that it had been able to reach even to the opposite side of the window, Shara was glad that she had managed to escape most of the effect.

Sealing her mind to any outside contact, the same way she had learned to do when she was blocking out Darkon so that she would be able to sleep, Shara focused harder than she ever had on her demorph. She didn't want to spend any longer as a small, helpless creature in this house than she absolutely had to. Rising back to her own, human feet at last, Shara flicked her right wrist and summoned her dagger.

Just as she hadn't been about to let anyone find her as a bird in this place, dangerous as it was proving to be, she certainly wasn't going to go traipsing around unarmed, either.

Sprinting over to where Rachel lay, having been knocked to the floor by the same shock that had crippled Shara's left wing, Shara put her left hand on Rachel's chest. What she would do next depended on what she found here; if Rachel was alive, then Shara would get the both of them out of this dangerous place herself; but if the other girl was dead, then Shara would transform, rip this place down to its very foundations, and then personally interrogate Mr. Joe Bob Fenestre about just what the hell he was trying to accomplish by having all of this security around his house. Luckily for Mr. Fenestre, Shara's sensitized fingertips felt the rapid beating of Rachel's eagle's heart.

Shara didn't know what kind of a heart-rate was normal for any type of bird, much less a bird of prey, but if Rachel's heart was beating than that at least meant that she was still alive.

Scooping Rachel up, Shara gently tucked the other girl under her left arm, then set off at a fast lope. Knowing that she would be able to hear any guards before they got close enough to cause her any trouble, Shara winced as a loud, nigh brain-shattering alarm started to go off. It would have been annoying enough if she'd still been your average, baseline human, but with her senses enhanced the way they were, not to mention the fact that she'd been relying on her sense of hearing to tell where people were, it was downright _painful_.

Actually, literally painful.

Wincing as she forced the pain away from her conscious mind, enough at least so that she could continue making for the front door, Shara tucked Rachel in close to her chest, bared her dagger, and then set off for the front of the mansion at a full-out run. The shriek of the alarm scraped her nerves raw, and it was all Shara could do not to transform in the middle of the hallway and just blast her way out.

She knew she could do something like that, the information that had been forcibly imprinted in her mind by the Radam gave her a good idea of what her capabilities were, and firing an intensely destructive energy-beam from her own, armored body was one of them. The only downsides were that the weapon itself – she couldn't quite think of the name for it at the moment, but as she had other things on her mind Shara wasn't going to trouble herself with trying – had only one shot, and using it would drain all of her energy and leave her entirely helpless. Not to mention that the energy-discharge itself had an uncomfortably large chance of attracting Darkon's forces.

It was really quite distinctive.

A moving shape darted in front of her, but with eyes beginning to water from the pain in her head, Shara wasn't able to tell much more about it than the fact that it was human and that it was probably trying to threaten her. And there was, she knew, only one real way to answer a threat; cutting the man down with her dagger as she passed him, Shara wiped the liquid out of her watering eyes and continued on her way down the hall. She was probably only going to get one shot at this, so she was going to do whatever she had to, to get herself and Rachel out of this trap; damn the consequences and damn her own conscience.

Another man with a gun appeared in front of her, and Shara beheaded him with her dagger. With the noise of the alarms filling the hall, she wouldn't be able to spare the attention to check on Rachel without risking being pinned down by Mr. Fenestre's obviously fanatical security-forces; she couldn't risk that, and so she wouldn't be able to tell when Rachel was starting to revive unless the other girl started talking to her. It was kind of annoying, but it was the situation she had to deal with, so Shara wasn't going to dwell on it too much.

She dealt with three more of Fenestre's guards on her way through the halls, either beheading, gutting, or slitting their throats in passing, before she came to an imposing pair of doors in her way. Not sparing them any more attention than it took to kick them open, Shara regained her balance quickly and kept running, on alert for any more of the security-forces that might try to stop her.

She didn't know the exact layout of the house, but since she and Rachel had come in through a window at the back, it seemed a pretty safe bet that going forward would take them back outside.

The halls were nice enough, she supposed, and the carpet felt soft enough beneath her feet that under any other set of circumstances Shara would have wanted to stop for a moment and feel it. But not now; not with Rachel's life probably depending on her speed, and not with alarms scraping her nerves raw with their shrieking. All that mattered now was getting the hell _out_ of here as fast as she could.

Two more armed men appeared in front of her then, but as she moved to cut them down like the others, she noticed that one of them had been looking at something over her right shoulder. That meant that there had to be at least one more person behind her. Just as she was about to turn around to deal with this new threat, the same way she'd dealt with all of the others who'd been so unfortunate as to get in her way, Shara felt a blast of shocking numbness envelop the back of her body.

Before she could once again muster the clarity of mind to turn and attack, a second blast hit her just slightly above where the last one had. Now lacking the dexterity to use her dagger, Shara let it fall from nerveless fingers. She didn't need a weapon, she _was_ a weapon; she just had to get in close.

The third blast that hit her knocked Shara to the ground, her entire body one big mass of pins-and-needles. There was a fourth, and Shara knew nothing more.


	32. Dog attack

The alarms were still ringing harshly in his ears, but Jake found it hard to care about that, at first. He remembered giving the order for the others to back off, to get back into the air in an effort to save themselves, and for that Jake was glad to know that his mind hadn't _entirely_ shut down when Shara had dove into Fenestre's mansion in pursuit of Rachel, but he still wasn't entirely sure what do about her.

He really should have known that she would try to do something like that, though; she _was_ really protective of all of them, since they were pretty much the only family she had now.

Pushing those thoughts out of his mind, knowing that it wouldn't do any of the others any good if he was too distracted with thoughts of Shara and Rachel to function as the leader that they all needed, Jake flapped his wings harder to try and regain some of his lost altitude. He'd seen Cassie passing over the top of the wall and circling higher, but he, Marco, and Ax were all struggling with the dead, cool air nearer to the ground. Flapping harder, Jake felt himself begin rising through the air.

Rising entirely too slowly to be able to escape from anything that might try to cause him trouble.

"Shoot them!" someone on the ground yelled; Jake flapped harder.

"What, the birds?"

"Yes! The birds! Those are the orders!"

A hail of gunfire erupted from the direction of the two uniformed speakers, but all that Jake could really hope to do in his falcon morph was just to keep flapping and hope that he and all of the others would be able to escape this trap.

(Prince Jake, I have been hit!)

Watching as Ax's Northern Harrier morph stagger and begin to fall from the sky, Jake dove toward his fellow Animorph with all the speed his remaining altitude could give him; he didn't know if it was going to be enough, but he had to try all the same.

(Hold on, Ax-man, I'm coming,) he heard Tobias say.

Tobias was the only one of them who hadn't been diving for that window, but he was also at least twenty feet above the place where Ax had begun falling from the sky. Jake didn't know if he would make it, but Tobias had tried it all the same, and Jake wasn't about to order him to pull up. Not when one of their friends and fellow Animorphs was in so much danger.

(This is gonna hurt!) Tobias said, digging his talons into Ax's morph's shoulder and chest when he'd caught up to the falling Andalite; only three feet above the ground.

Cassie rushed in to help, digging her own talons into Ax's left wing, and together she and Tobias hauled Ax up and over the mansion's fence and the one just inside of it. Having pulled out of his dive when Tobias had latched onto Ax to carry him, Jake let himself breathe again for the first time in what felt like forever. However, just as he was beginning to turn his attention to Marco, to see if the other boy might need some help making his own escape, Jake saw Cassie and Tobias drop Ax in the dog run after they had failed to make it over the last fence.

A team of trained Rottweilers was heading straight for him, followed by their trainer, moving slowly and deliberately as he unlimbered a submachine gun.

(Cassie! Tobias! It's now or never!) he shouted, folding his wings and going into a shallow dive.

_Too_ shallow a dive; he was slow enough that the dogs would have had to have been blind not to see him coming. But it was all he really _could_ do, now; now, with two of his people already captured, and a third in danger of the same. He'd aimed for the eyes of the closest dog to him, knowing that he had no chance of breaking Ax free in his current morph.

Still, he _could_ at least create some confusion.

Unfortunately, the dog he'd been aiming for caught sight of him out of the corner of its right eye. Fortunately, he was able to slash the dog's face, close enough to its eye to spill blood onto the eye itself. Unfortunately, the dog was apparently well-trained enough to ignore what had to be at least a fairly debilitating injury.

The dog's jaws closed on the tip of his left wing, not doing any physical damage, but managing to yank him down out of the air while pulling out some of the feathers from the wing itself. Rolling as he hit the ground, Jake struggled to get himself back upright. He knew it wasn't going to do him all that much good: the dog was nearly on him, and a falcon on the ground was nowhere near as dangerous as one in the air, but at least he'd have a _chance_.

That was more important than people might think; you never really knew that would happen next in these kind of fights.

As if to prove his point, Marco in his Osprey morph came rocketing down, slashing a long, bleeding line up the back of the dog's neck. The dog howled in agony, turning to confront the bird that had damaged him, and Jake flapped with all his might to get himself up and off the ground.

The second dog, however, had managed to keep his focus on Tobias, Cassie, and Ax; even with Slade snapping and biting at him with his large, sharp beak, darting in and out to harass the dog from the air. Cassie and Tobias were trying to drag Ax's battered bird body away and out of the dog run where they had dropped it. However, it was becoming more and more obvious that they weren't going to make it.

Ax's morph was just too heavy for the two of them to move, and the dog was almost on them already.


	33. Forced Departure

(Leave him!) Jake yelled, making the call that he knew he had to, even as he hated himself for it. (Slade, break off!)

The raven that was Slade's chosen morph abandoned his pursuit of the dog without another word, flapping his way back into the air without hesitation; there were times that Jake envied Slade for just that lack, but he couldn't think about that right now.

(No way!) Tobias shouted back, even as he and Cassie both struggled to support Ax's weight.

(Do it!) Jake ordered. (Do it, or you're all dead!)

They released him, just in time for the dog that had been after the three of them to snap the injured Andalite up; Jake hoped then that he hadn't gotten his friend killed, but he knew that there hadn't really been any other choice. Though how he was going to explain any of that to the others, Jake didn't really know.

(Shara! Shara, if you can hear me, we're coming back for you!) he called, even as he wondered if his fellow Animorph could actually hear him; he'd seen her run off with Rachel under one arm, but she'd gotten out of sight too quickly for him to determine if anything had gone wrong. Though if it had, that wouldn't have surprised him; not today. (We'll come back, I promise.)

Joining up with the others in the air, knowing that they couldn't really hate him any more than he hated himself at the moment, Jake sighed about as well as any falcon could.

(We need to find some place to rest,) he said, ignoring the oppressive silence from the others. (And then, we need to start making another plan.)

(I know a place,) Tobias said curtly, already beginning to head off in that direction without so much as another word.

Jake knew why that was, of course, and he also knew that there wasn't much of a chance of him talking Tobias back around. Not when he'd been responsible for this whole fiasco in the first place. Still, if Shara were here to ask for advice, she'd have been telling him that there was nothing to do but move forward. She'd say that yes, he'd made a mistake and it was important to acknowledge that, but that he couldn't let it make his future decisions for him.

She'd say that it was good to remember his mistakes, but dwelling on them wouldn't do anyone any good; given that he'd gotten her and the others into so much trouble by being impulsive, Jake was at least going to try to listen to the advice that she would have probably given him if he'd ever asked.

When they finally made it to the place where Tobias had chosen to lead them, a Wendy's of all places, Jake was feeling decidedly guilty about all that had happened. _Mind in the moment, Jake, he reminded himself, just the way he could remember Shara doing,_ even before she'd become one of the Animorphs. _Nothing's going to be solved if you don't solve it, so just admit you screwed up, and keep moving forward._

His resolve strengthened, Jake turned his attention to the others. Jake breathed a brief sigh of relief. Nothing irreparable had happened, so now it was time he started getting back to solving what he could. The first problem, of course, was something that everyone but Tobias had to worry about.

(How long have we been in morph?) he asked, hoping one of them had managed to spot a clock on their way here; he knew he'd been too distracted to do anything of the sort.

(I don't know!) Marco shouted back. (How the hell am I supposed to know?)

(We could have at least gotten Ax out of there!) Tobias accused, no longer sounding quite so detached as he had when Jake had told him to find this place.

(They have Rachel, Shara, and Ax,) Cassie said, sounding more frantic than Jake had ever heard her. (We have to get them back!)

No one was really thinking all that clearly, with the obvious exception of Slade, but since the older boy wasn't the kind of person who would take the initiative to make any kind of a plan, that was a completely moot point. It was on him to make the decisions here, just the way it always seemed to be, and while he kind of resented that, he also knew that resentment wasn't going to help him get anything done. _Weather the storm; be the eye at the heart of it,_ he thought to himself, remembering something that Grant Goddard had said to Shara a few times.

(I'm fairly sure that we've been in morph for about thirty minutes,) he said, after taking a moment to gather himself the way he could remember Shara doing at times like these. (We have an hour and a half.)

(To do what?) Tobias demanded, his mental voice harsh. (That place is a fortress! Fences, dogs, and some kind of forcefield in the windows!)

(Controllers,) Marco said, voicing the conclusion that all of them had probably come to by now. (Fenestre is a Controller. It was a trap; had to be. Who else would order their people to shoot at birds?)

(Rachel and Ax will have to demorph in an hour and a half or be trapped,) Cassie said, sounding only a bit more calm than she had before. (But, what's worse is that Shara... she's... Slade, I'm so sorry.)

(I think Shara might be in less danger than one of us would be, in the same position,) Jake said, sweeping the others with his falcon's gaze. (She has all the same powers that Slade does, remember?)

(I know,) Cassie said, still sounding stricken. (But, that's not even the worst of it. If they know that Shara's human, they could suspect that about the rest of us. And if they infest her...)

(I know,) he said; he was trying to keep what Mr. Goddard had said in mind, trying to be the calm center that he and the others would need if they were going to be able to get anything done right now, but it was getting harder with every word someone said.


	34. Counting Losses

(Being trapped in eagle form might not be the worst thing facing Rachel,) Tobias said, sounding as morose as Jake had ever heard him.

(Oh yeah, you _would_ think that!) Marco sneered. (Maybe Rachel doesn't _want_ to spend the rest of her life eating mice and sleeping in trees like you, Tobias!)

(That's not what I meant,) Tobias snapped. (I meant that she might be _dead_. Or the morph she's in might be fatally injured.)

(Ax was alive, I'm sure of that,) Cassie said, seeming only marginally better off than the rest of them; Jake honestly didn't blame her, but now wasn't the time for that kind of thing.

(All right, calm down everyone. We're all on-edge here, but nothing's going to be resolved if we're at each other's throats,) he said; the words belonged to either Shara's father or Grant Goddard, he didn't know which and for the moment he didn't really care.

(Didn't _any_ of this show up when you _researched_ this lunatic's mansion?) Marco demanded, sounding furious.

(I don't think any of it would have even if I did,) he said, already trying to think of a plan.

There had to be a way for him to save the others, some way that he hadn't thought of as yet; some way that would make it possible for him to break open the defenses surrounding the Fenestre mansion. But Marco and Tobias were at each other's throats again, and Cassie was starting to moan about how now that the Yeerks had Rachel and Shara, it was only a matter of time until they found out about the rest of the Animorphs. How it was only a matter of time until the Yeerks found their parents.

He couldn't think with all of these distractions, and as much as he hated to admit it, there was a part of him that didn't _want_ to. After all, _he'd_ been the one to make the call to abandon three of his own people in enemy territory. He'd been the one so determined to find out what was going on with Fenestre that he'd been willing to risk his fellow Animorphs' – his _friends_ – lives in a gambit to find that information.

He was the one who'd let himself be distracted from important research just because his mother wanted to have dinner together; who the hell was he to be making plans right now?

(I don't know what to do,) he said softly, not knowing if he'd projected the thought or not.

At least, not until Tobias responded. (What?)

(Tick-tock, tick-tock,) Marco all but snarled. (We need some kind of a plan. Time is running out!)

(Yes, well I'm trying to think of one, but I'm running into a lot of dead-ends at the moment, all right?) he shot back.

(Don't give me that crap,) Marco sneered. (You got us into this mess, now get us out!)

(Leave him alone,) Cassie said, and he sighed as well as a falcon could.

He'd wanted to snap at Marco for that, maybe demand that _he_ come up with a plan if he thought it was so easy; but that would have only annoyed Marco, and the two of them would have likely gotten into some sort of a fight. And that wasn't something any of them could afford right now.

(We... we could try using cockroach morphs,) Cassie said, sounding about as uncertain as he'd ever heard her. He tried not to blame himself for that, but that didn't change the fact that he was responsible for it. (Crawl into the mansion, and-)

(No time,) Marco cut in. (We'd have to morph way outside the outer perimeter fence, then get all the way up the hill; it's hundreds of yards, at _least_. Besides, they're Controllers in there. They'll be ready for us this time.)

(No,) Jake said softly, having put together what he'd seen at the mansion with the usual tactics the Yeerks seemed so fond of and coming up short.

(No _what_?) Tobias demanded.

(They aren't Controllers,) he continued, absolutely sure now of this, one point. (Any time we've ever gone after the Yeerks, they may have used a lot of human-Controllers, but they always had Hork-Bajir backing them up. And, even Taxxons in some cases. There were no Hork-Bajir in that fight. And every one of them used ordinary guns, like any you could find here on Earth; not a Dracon beam in sight. Not to mention the dogs; Yeerks would _never_ use dogs. They don't trust animals, since they know about the morphing and all.)

(Okay, so what kind of a human being would tell his guards to shoot at birds?) Marco demanded, sounding like he was trying but failing to keep a lid on his temper.

(I don't know,) Jake admitted. (But these guys _were_ humans. Shara, Rachel and Ax may not know that, and I think we all remember just what Shara does to people she thinks are dangerous,) he said, remembering the corpses of the guards they had left behind at Ocean World. He wondered, sometimes, if their bodies had ever been found, but he didn't think he'd ever know. Sometimes, though, he didn't _want_ to know. (We have to get them out of there, and we don't have time to be subtle.)

(They still have guns,) Cassie pointed out reasonably. (They might not have Dracon beams, or squads of Hork-Bajir and Taxxons, but they still have guns, and fences. And probably some big, thick doors.)

(Yeah, they do,) Jake conceded. (And, we don't have any morphs between us that are fast enough, or tough enough to bust into that place without getting shot up.) _Yeah, we don't have any _morphs _that could do that, but not all of us need them,_ he mused, slanting a glance at Slade. Still, while the older boy wasn't at all likely to complain about being asked to do something like that on his own, it wouldn't have been fair for Jake to ask him to. _He_ was the one who'd gotten his friends into this fix, and just asking someone to get them out of it – no matter _how_ powerful that someone was – wouldn't be right. (But, I have an idea. How far are we from The Gardens?)


	35. New Paths

Once Tobias had given him the information he needed and insisted on going with him, something that Jake accepted after only a token protest, he left Marco and Cassie with orders to watch for any changes in the situation, but otherwise to stay put. He made sure to make things clear for the two of them, telling them in no uncertain terms that he didn't want to come back and find that _they_ had gotten themselves captured as well. Flying to The Gardens with Tobias was most calming than he had honestly been expecting it to be, since neither of them said much to each other on the way.

That gave him plenty of time to work out the kinks in the tentative plan that he had formed while he and the remaining Animorphs had been sitting perched on top of that Wendy's together. He'd decided that Slade _was_ going to be a part of it, since it would just be stupid not to have someone with his kind of power to back them all up, but Jake himself was going to take just as active a role in the plan. It was only fair.

(Are you at least going to tell me what we're here for?) Tobias demanded, sounding more irritated than truly angry.

(Look down there,) he directed.

They were currently flying above a large outdoor habitat, one that consisted of a grassland-ish sort of plain, a fairly large mud wallow, and an equally large watering hole. There were four animals wandering around inside this habitat. Four large, boxy-framed animals that looked like they had been built by General Dynamics.

(Rhinos?) Tobias asked, sounding dubious.

(Yeah. I need a morph that can go straight through those fences, through the doors, and even take a few bullets if I need it to. Why? You have a better idea?)

(None that I can think of,) Tobias said, after a few, long seconds. (Still, how are you going to get close enough to one of those things to even acquire it?)

(Two of the rhinos are off at the far end of the habitat,) he pointed out, having taken the whole thing in when he and Tobias had been flying over it. (The crowds probably won't be able to see them all that well.)

(Wait... You mean you're just going to drop right down in there?)

(There's no time for anything else,) he pointed out calmly, his focus already shifting to the pair of rhinos that he'd marked.

(Oh, man,) Tobias moaned, sounding more than a little dubious. (Look, at least let me provide a distraction for you.)

He hesitated; on the one hand, what Tobias was asking for was reasonable: he'd probably be a lot better off if those people in the crowd were all looking somewhere else when he dropped into the rhino habitat. On the other, given the spectacular mess he'd made of things so far, he wasn't particularly eager to put another of his friends in harm's way. In the end, though, caution won out over the self-recrimination he was still dealing with.

(Yeah, okay. But don't get hurt out there. You hear me? Do not get hurt.)

He didn't think he'd be able to deal with it if one more person who'd been trying to help him got themselves captured because of what he was doing. Or, especially, because of what he'd _asked_ them to do.

Tobias peeled off, angling his wings away to split their trajectories, and Jake began to slowly spiral downwards. He'd have normally gone right into a dive, but under the circumstances, he wanted to make his approach as subtly as he could. One thing that you did _not_ want to do, was to spook creatures as large, dangerous, and sturdy as rhinos.

He was aiming for the back of the rhino farthest away from the crowds, somewhere he thought that the people gathered to watch them wouldn't have been able to see him; even _without_ Tobias' distraction to get them all looking the other way. When he finally landed on the large, broad back of one of the enormous animals, the rhino barely twitched.

That was good; he was glad to know that he hadn't managed to spook the thing.


	36. Acquisition

Of course, what he was going to have to do next was probably going to be a lot more difficult than this: he was going to have to demorph, since it was impossible to acquire DNA when you were already morphed. That was why he'd picked this spot, so far from the press of the crowds; and that was why, now that Tobias had offered it, he was going to wait for the hawk's distraction before he started demorphing.

Turning to take in the crowd, wanting to know when it would be safe for him to demorph, he saw them in far greater detail than a human would have ever been able to. It was almost like he was standing right there in front of them; he could see the color of their eyes, the various foods that some of them were holding, and a loose button on one man's shirt. Of course, it went without saying that no one in that crowd could see him in anywhere near the detail that he could see them.

For one thing, he was a pretty small bird; for another, they were all limited to human senses.

_All right; no time to go waiting all day; let's get this done,_ Jake reminded himself, feeling more grimly determined than he had in awhile. Demorphing, Jake wondered briefly how long it would take the rhino he was sitting on to react to his presence. It would eventually, he knew, since there was no way that anything with senses would fail to notice someone demorphing _right on top of them _even if they didn't know what, exactly, was happening.

He gained weight swiftly, as his hollow bird-bones were replaced by comparatively-denser human bone and his muscles and general body-structure were altered to become human once again. He wondered for a moment just what the rhino he was on would do, once it became fully aware of his presence. Heck, he wondered what would it would do when it noticed him morphing the way he was doing.

He wondered if the rhino would throw him to the ground and impale him with that giant horn he was so clearly aware of, or if it would wait until he'd fallen off its back and then trample him.

Putting those thoughts out of his mind, since his morphing has started to slow down with his concentration split the way it had been, Jake pictured his human body all the more clearly. There was no time to wonder what would happen, no time to wonder if the people watching the rhinos in their habitat would see what he was doing here, no time to wonder what Tobias would come up with to distract them. No time even to think about what the others might be doing at the Fenestre mansion even now.

No time for anything but to focus on his own, human form so that he could regain it all the faster.

He could, however, take notice of something that was happening within his field of vision: something like the way that Tobias had just swooped down and snatched a little girl's pink puff of cotton candy right out of her hand. Or like the way he carried it back up into the air with him and started swooping and diving around with it, even letting it go for a few seconds so he could catch it again. Or the way the crowd laughed and pointed up at him as he did all of that.

He _could_ notice that, he just couldn't think about it.

Turning away from the outside of the habitat, where he could faintly hear the laughter and applause of the crowds, Jake refocused his attention on his own situation. He knew that no one would be watching him, not with the way Tobias was holding all of their attention, but that didn't mean that he was completely out of danger. There was still the rhino to think about.

The rhino whose back he was sitting on. The rhino who was _so_ much bigger than either his falcon or human forms. The rhino whose DNA he was planning to acquire for just the sort of traits that could easily get him killed under just these circumstances.

Just then, the rhino did indeed notice what Jake was doing. Snorting more loudly than Jake had ever heard something else do before, the animal broke into a trot. Jake, deprived of both his hands and talons by the caprice of the morphing process, was thrown from its back by even that comparatively small motion.

The rhino, towering above him like a small truck, bent its horned head down to sniff at him. Having something so dangerous so very, _very_ close to his vulnerable, demorphing body, forced Jake to swallow harshly with his suddenly-dry throat. He'd never been this close to such a large, dangerous animal before. _Well, almost never,_ he mused with a bit of dark humor, thinking back to his encounter with the Siberian tiger that had become his preferred combat-morph.

Still, this was the closest he had gotten while not-quite-demorphed.

Once his hands had reformed, Jake reached out and grasped the base of the rhino-horn sticking out so invitingly toward him. He kept the side of his hand in contact with the rhino's flesh, just in case the acquiring didn't work on dead cells like hair or fingernails for some reason. Jake knew that his only hope for acquiring the rhino without getting himself killed in the process was for the animal to fall into the same kind of trance that most of the others did when they were acquired.

Unlike the shark that they had all acquired; he could _still_ remember the way that thing had thrashed in Shara's arms as she had held it out for all of them.

Still, once he'd begun the acquiring process, the rhino became as docile as he'd ever seen any animal become. He was glad for it; the _last_ thing he wanted to deal with was a startled rhino. Once the new DNA-pattern was fully integrated into his store of morphs, Jake backed slowly away from the rhino as he began to morph into his falcon form again.

That one might still be in the acquisition-trance, but none of the others were, and it was really best that he get as far away from them as he could manage before they began to come his way. Or before the one he'd just finished acquiring woke up.


	37. Return flight

Taking off just before he'd fully finished morphing, Jake powered his way back into the air with the aid of a strong breeze that he'd been fortunate enough to be able to catch on his way up. Meeting up with Tobias, he lead the hawk away from the people he'd been amusing with his antics and the two of them made for the Fenestre mansion again.

It wasn't easy; both of them were exhausted, though for different reasons, and there would be no rest for either of them until this mission was over. Another thing that served to tire them out was the wind: it was blowing south, and the two of them needed to head west to meet up with the remaining members of their team.

Marco and Cassie were waiting in a tree just across the road from Fenestre's front gate, with Slade swooping up to join them just as Jake spotted them.

(Hey, you three!) he called. (Anything happen down there?) He hoped it hadn't, but there was always that chance.

(Yeah; the clock kept ticking,) Marco said grimly.

(Marco and I noticed one thing, though,) Cassie said, not sounding nearly as grim as Marco had; she sounded a bit sad, really. (Thank goodness for these eyes. We saw that you were right not to try to sneak inside with some kind of insect morph. There's a band of poison around each door. And, also what looks like some kind of bug-zapper in the windows. That must be what shocked Rachel, though it's obvious that Shara managed to avoid it somehow. I think Mr. Fenestre might have some psychological problems.)

(He can afford them,) Marco said, grimly dismissive. (Now, what are we going to do to get Ax, Rachel, and Shara _out_ of there?)

(We're going to knock down those fences, kick in the door, and stomp, crush, or bludgeon anyone and anything that gets in our way,) he said, grimly determined.

(Cool,) Marco said, his humor still present though a bit more strained than usual. (I'm sure Rachel would approve. But, how? And who's "we"?)

Landing in the grass just beside the tree where the remainder of his friends and fellow Animorphs were gathered, Jake took as deep a breath as his falcon lungs would allow and then began demorphing at warp-speed. Breathing more deeply with his human lungs to steady himself for what he was about to do, Jake looked up at the tree.

"Slade, I'm going to need you to come down here, please," he said, knowing that Slade would follow his orders but still wanting to be polite about things.

(Right, Jake,) the older boy answered, just as he came fluttering down out of the tree in his raven morph.

"All right," he said, nodding sharply at the sight in front of him; both to reassure himself about what he was going to ask of Slade, and what the two of them were going to end up doing. He'd gone into very few battles with the express purpose of destroying things. "I'm going to need you to demorph, and then I'm going to need you to transform. Just like Shara did to deal with those sharks, all right?"

(Right,) the raven said, and then Jake saw Slade beginning his own demorph out of the corner of his eye.


	38. Heavy Armor

He couldn't spare anymore attention for what Slade was doing, however, since he had already spent enough time telling the other boy to do it. Focusing on the rhino that he had acquired not a few minutes ago, Jake began to change. He could see a bright flash of light from beside him, right where Slade had been standing, and so he knew that Slade had demorphed and was now getting into that armor of his.

He was glad for it, insomuch as he could be glad for anything when he was concentrating so hard on his morph.

The first thing to change was his skin, fading from human-standard pink to the gray of the rhino he was morphing. It also became much tougher and thicker, something that sent tingles rippling all over his skin as it happened. He was still in his normal _shape_, at least generally, but he could no longer be mistaken for human even at first glance.

His legs and hands were the next things to begin changing; the legs thickening and shortening, even as his fingers withered away to leave flat, thick, hard nails in their place. Nails that soon expanded to become bigger than his fingers had been to start with.

With his legs and arms no longer in their proper places, Jake fell forward onto all-fours. His bones pushed against his new skin as they, too were reformed by the morphing process, his ears slid higher on his head, rolling into tubes with a large opening at the top. His face had remained almost untouched up to this point, a fact that no longer surprised him with all of the experience he now had.

Now, however, his head began to change to match the rest of the new body he was making for himself. The bones of his face began to stretch, growing heavier and denser as they did so. His head was dragged lower, both by the new weight on it and by the morphing still rearranging his neck and shoulders, if only subtly at this point.

(What in the... What are you morphing?) Marco demanded, sounding like he was just starting to freak out.

Just as he was about to answer, the last of the changes, and by far the most distinctive, took place: the smaller horn was the first to emerge, pulling its way out of the shifting bones of his face and stopping soon after. The forward horn, by far the largest of the two, did _not_ stop after such a short time. It just kept on growing, right up until it almost filled the center of his vision.

Thicker, larger, and longer by far than the one that sprouted before.

(Oh,) Marco said, obviously having recognized just what it was that he was becoming. (_That's_ what you're morphing.)

(How much time left?) he asked.

(Maybe ten minutes, but I can't be sure,) Tobias said.

The rhino's mind was not what he'd been expecting at all; there was no aggression, no violence. It was hunger, that's what the rhino felt. It wanted to find a nice grazing spot and settle down there.

Still, there _were_ defensive instincts that the rhino possessed; those he could use, if it came down to it. There was concern, a search for another shape like his own. The rhino was wary of being challenged by one of his own kind.

But, with only the birds in the tree next to him, the rhino that Jake had become was surprisingly calm.

Calm, that was, until a new scent, borne on an errant breeze, reached his nose. This new scent was unnatural; one that had never been smelled by any rhino in the history of its kind, something that the genetic memories that Jake's morph possessed didn't have even a single point of reference for. The scent itself was almost metallic, but not like any metal that either the rhino or Jake himself had ever smelled before.

It had undertones that didn't belong, either; every facet of it spoke of _other_, reeked of _danger_, and as Jake turned the rhino's head to try to pinpoint the source of that scent, his near-useless rhino eyes fell upon the only person that could have been the source.

Slade stood there, but not the Slade that he or any of the others were familiar with; the silent, obedient, black-haired green-eyed older teen that Jake had become familiar with over the several weeks that they had spent working with him to halt the Yeerks' invasion of Earth.

This Slade was far different.

This Slade was much larger than he had been, for one thing, and his silhouette had changed a great deal. This Slade had large, armored shoulders that stuck out several inches from the main trunk of his body, and long, sharp-featured legs and arms. With his weak rhino eyes Jake couldn't pick out the other details of Slade's armored body, but he _could_ see the new outlines that the older teen possessed.

Those outlines looked about as dangerous as Slade smelled, now.


	39. Power of Force

(Wow, Slade; you don't look a _thing_ like Shara when you transform,) Marco said, sounding like he didn't know what to make of the other boy now.

(Slade, get on my back and let's go,) Jake said quickly; none of them had the time to waste standing around thinking about what the differences between Slade's and Shara's armor might mean.

_(Right, Jake,)_ Slade said, and Jake felt the full weight of Slade's armor pressing down on him as the older boy settled down on top of him; like some nightmarish parody of a horse and its rider.

Knowing the rhino mind as well as he did after having morphed it, Jake had thought that he would have been supplying all of the aggression that he needed to get this job done. He'd been fully prepared for that, having more than enough to spare after everything that had happened today; he was _more_ than prepared for it, really. But now, with Slade's unnerving, dangerous scent coming from all around, the rhino mind that paired with his own was starting to become more agitated with every second Slade sat there.

That was good; he could work with that.

(Okay; Cassie, Marco? You guys stay with us, but stay back. Wait till Slade and I have cleared away the defenses before you two advance. Slade?)

_(Yes, Jake?)_ the older boy asked, sounding more eager than Jake had ever heard from him; it was strange, after the way that Jake had heard him sound before. But nevermind; he didn't have time to think about it.

(Let's see what kind of damage we can do.

_(Right,_) Slade said, and Jake could almost _see_ him grinning.

As he charged across the street, Jake was struck by how well his new rhino body could move. It was almost like what Rachel and Tobias had both described about being a cat, or else what he himself had always felt when taking on his tiger morph. Only this new form of his outmassed his tiger morph several times over; it was kind of strange, how two different animals, who were built in such different ways, had the same style of movement.

It was also not particularly important.

Jake's main problem with the morph he was currently in was the eyesight. He knew from his observations of the Fenestre mansion, both in bird morph and his short time in his human form, that the front gate was just across the street from where all of them had been, almost in a perfectly straight line in fact, but he couldn't see even half that far.

In fact, this new morph of his could only see about three yards in any direction, and tended to lose track of things if they didn't move. Also, to see something as well as he could, Jake first had to look with one eye, and then the one on the other side of his head; it was like trying to look through windows in two separate rooms of a house.

(Slade, I'm going to need your help,) he said, knowing that he could have asked one of the others, but also knowing that it would be much easer for Slade to take care of things. He was right there, after all. (You're going to have to aim me.)

_(Why's that?)_ Slade asked, and Jake could feel the older teen almost quivering with excitement. He wondered why for a moment, before pushing it aside; it wasn't important.

(I'm nearly blind in my current morph; I wasn't prepared for quite _how_ badly a rhino sees.)

_(All right; I'll take care of it.)_

Seconds later, Jake's vision was filled with color, slightly green-tinted, and clearer than he'd ever seen before in his life. He could see the gate in front of him, but only for a few moments before something long and jagged and made of some type of silvery metal sliced through it like butter.

(Slade, what did you just _do_?) he demanded, even as he watched the severed pieces of the gate that had been standing in front of them go crashing to the ground almost in slow-motion.

_(You said you wanted my help,)_ Slade said, sounding like he was entirely too distracted to hold any kind of conversation; like he was anticipating something that he knew was coming. _(I'm helping you.)_

(I meant for you to tell me where I needed to go, not... telepathically link my vision centers with yours,) he said, having realized even as he spoke just what it was that Slade was doing for him.

_(That way would have taken too long,)_ Slade said, his attention now almost completely focused on something beyond the scope of their current conversation. _(This is faster.)_

Sighing, knowing from his experience with Shara that there wasn't much of a chance of his talking Slade out of this when he was so clearly focused on something else, Jake decided to drop the issue. There would be plenty of time to explain to Slade about the differences between helping someone and freaking them out later; Jake would make sure of it. For now, he would have to use what he was given.

Veering ever so slightly to the right, having spotted the most direct path into the mansion, Jake felt the remains of the gate that Slade had literally cut down passing beneath his feet; they rolled only slightly before his and Slade's combined weight ground them into the turf.


	40. Ramming speed

An alarm started blaring loudly, and Jake felt Slade tense up ever so slightly on his back; he also heard the older boy growl slightly, and he figured that hearing something like _that_ must be murder on someone with enhanced senses.

(Man, does this guy have a lot of different alarms, or what?) Tobias groused.

(Jake, there's another fence coming up in front of you,) Marco said.

(Yeah, thanks,) he said, opting not to mention that he could see the fence, and the landscaping behind it, and even parts of the house itself, almost better than he had seen them when he was in his falcon morph. It was just too weird to think about; and even weirder was the reason _why_ he was seeing that well.

He wasn't often reminded so forcefully about just how inhuman Slade was, and he wasn't sure if he liked it.

Slade didn't bother slicing through the fence this time, but that was probably only because Jake's rhino's horn had ripped right through it before the other boy could even bring that weapon of his to bear.

(Well, so much for the fence,) Marco said, clearly amused. (You know, this just might _work_.)

Marco had sounded about as pleased as Jake felt by the idea, but before he could think on it too long, he saw motion. Or rather, _Slade_ saw motion, and because Jake was seeing through his eyes even though he'd rather not have, Jake himself picked up on it, too. The motion was from the pack of dogs that were coming up quickly on the two of them.

This time, Slade wasn't as slow to bring that double-ended weapon of his to bear. Jake really wished he had been though... The smell of blood invading his nostrils as Slade impaled one of the lead dogs on the tip of his double-ended lance was bad enough, but what was so much worse was to see him do it, in such stark clarity that each moment was nearly burned into his mind.

He knew he wasn't going to be forgetting _that_ for a long time to come.

(Slade, _punt_; do not _stab_,) he said firmly, knowing that only a direct order to the older boy was going to get him to do anything.

_(Yes, Jake,)_ Slade said, and kicked the next dog to come after them; that one didn't stop skidding for quite a while, but at least it was still _alive_.

(Well, that was a bit more brutal than I was expecting,) Marco said, clearly more than a little shaken by what Slade had just done.

(Yeah,) he said, sighing in the only real way a rhino could. (I know.)

(Okay, next you've got another fence, and then the door after that,) Marco said, sounding like he was trying to get his mind back on track.

(Thanks,) Jake said, even though he hadn't needed the direction; it was nice to know people were thinking about him.


	41. Forced Entry

Then, seeing motion again, Jake's field of vision shifted and he was given a glimpse of what the new obstacle – he was hesitant to call anything a threat while in this morph – they were going to have to deal with was.

(Look out!) Tobias shouted. (Guards! The guys with the shotguns!)

Before he could say anything else, Slade had split the incoming man in half from his right shoulder to the left side of his waist.

(Slade! What did I just _say_?) he demanded, as the two halves of what had once been a living human being went crashing to the ground.

_(I thought you just meant that about the dogs,) _the other boy said, sounding genuinely confused; Jake didn't know what to think about that.

On the one hand, Slade had just killed someone who barely posed a threat to them in their current forms, but on the other... No, there _was_ no other hand, Slade had just _killed_ someone. Just the way he'd done when all of them had been making their way through Ocean World, and this time he didn't even have the flimsy excuse of being surprised by their presence the way he had been back then.

_Maybe this wasn't the best idea,_ he mused. Still, great idea or not, he didn't have the time to change the plan; to tell Slade to get out of his armor and into his panther morph. He could only be glad that the other guard, after seeing his partner get cut down like that, had run off to parts unknown.

No way in hell was _he_ coming back anytime soon.

(All right,) Marco said, sounding a bit shaken by what he'd just seen; Jake didn't blame him a bit. (You guys are just in front of the door, just go left, then right and you'll hit it.)

_In more ways than one,_ Jake thought to himself, with slightly strained humor.

Pelting forward, taking the path that Marco had told him about and Slade's eyes had picked out perfectly, Jake charged the door. He saw Slade's lance out and slicing, appearing to be in a straight line out from his own chest from his current perspective, and when Jake's own full, morphed weight hit the structure, he tore right through the likely-reinforced wood with barely any effort.

(We're inside, right?) he asked, even though he could see the furnishings in the outermost room perfectly well. A bit _too_ perfectly well, but then it wasn't _his_ eyes that were seeing them.

(Yes,) Tobias said, sounding about as grim as Jake had ever heard from him. (And we are _out_ of _time_.)


	42. Timed Search

(Slade, go with Cassie and search the right side of the house,) he said; he knew that, for some reason, a reason that probably had a lot to do with what the Radam had done to his mind, Cassie was the only other person who could exert any kind of control over Slade. (Marco and I will cover the right.)

_(Yes, Jake,)_ the Teknoman said calmly, climbing off of his back.

The link that Slade had established between the visual centers of both their brains went dormant again, and Jake was thankful for it. Useful as it had turned out to be, seeing through someone else's eyes was just plain _weird_.

XXX

As she and Slade left Jake and the others behind, Cassie couldn't help the slight apprehension when she looked down at the armored figure running along beneath her. He'd just... he'd just _killed_ that poor man, and that poor dog, just because they had been there. Just like he and Shara had killed those guards at Ocean World, or Shara had killed all those sharks.

(Slade, could you open that door for me?) she asked, putting aside her apprehension for a moment; her own feelings on the matter weren't important right now, what mattered was to rescue the others.

Slade kicked the requested door open, blowing it off its hinges in the process, and she looked around.

_(There's nothing in here,)_ Slade said, just a few moments after Cassie herself had come to that same conclusion.

(All right, let's move on,) she said; as she flew, she could hear Slade's heavy footfalls keeping pace with her almost perfectly.

The next few moments went the same way: with Slade punching or kicking down the doors that she directed him to, and the two of them finding nothing inside the rooms behind them. She knew that they were running out of time, that Rachel and Ax were running out of time and that Shara might not have any time at all, but she couldn't help wanting to know just what had been going on in Slade's mind when he had killed all of those people; if she knew, maybe she could stop it from happening again.

(Slade, could you tell me why you killed that guard outside?) she asked, just after he had crushed open the door that she had pointed out to him with a brutal haymaker.

_(He was a threat,)_ Slade said almost offhandedly, clearly more focused on looking for anyone else who might have been hiding in the room than on the conversation that the two of them were having. _(There's no one in _here _either.)_

(What do you mean? About them being a threat, Slade?) she asked, before he could mistake the question as being about what was going on inside the room. (They couldn't have hurt you, or even Jake in that rhino morph of his.)

_(No. They weren't a threat to either of us, they were a threat to you and Marco. You two are in bird morphs; those guns would have ripped right through you if they'd been given the chance to fire.)_

(Oh.) Put that way, it was touching the way he had reacted: doing everything he could to keep her and Marco safe from anything that might try to hurt them.

Still, people had died for those protective impulses. But, before she could think up a way to ask Slade to try to reign them in, Tobias called out to them.

(Slade! Cassie! I just found a room under heavy guard!) Tobias informed them, though he sounded fairly distracted by something. Cassie wondered what it was, then she decided to ask once he was done telling them about what he'd found. (It's upstairs; there are a lot of guys with guns here, so you're going to have to be careful around them, Cassie. I've already told Jake and Marco about it,) he paused for a moment, and Cassie heard the not-so-far-off sound of gunshots echoing through the house; she was beginning to suspect what might be worrying Tobias. (They'll probably be meeting up with you two, if you guys don't make it there first. Oh, and Jake says he wants you to morph for combat, Cassie.)

(All right,) she said, swooping down to land on the floor; Slade moved to stand over her, baring that lance of his in a way that showed he was ready for trouble before she could even ask, so that was good. She just hoped that no one else ended up getting killed today. As she began demorphing, Cassie decided to ask the question that was on her mind before she lost the capacity for thought-speak. (Tobias, those people we hear shooting; they're shooting at you, aren't they?)

(Yep,) Tobias said, sounding more nonchalant than Cassie was sure that _she_ would have sounded under the same circumstances. (Don't worry; these chumps couldn't hit the broad side of your barn. I'll be fine; you and Slade just meet up with the others, like Jake said.)


	43. Firepower

As she crossed the line from mostly-osprey to mostly-human, losing her thought-speak capability along the way, Cassie sighed. She didn't know just what was going on in this place, just what the Controller Joe Bob Fenestre could possibly be planning, but she knew that it wasn't anything good. He was a Yeerk; it was almost a given that he was planning something awful.

"Well, I guess it's just you and me, Slade," she said, turning to look up at the armored figure standing just behind her.

It was so strange, seeing him in that form; Marco was right, Slade didn't look a _thing_ like Shara did when he transformed. For one thing, his form was much more bulky; his shoulders alone were easily twice the size of Shara's when she transformed, and his chest was almost the same relative size. His arms and legs also seemed to have thicker armor on them, or maybe she just thought that because of the sharper lines of Slade's armor. Still, the most drastic difference between the shapes of their armor was the shape of their respective helmets: Shara's was built close to her head, and almost softly curved in places; Slade's was more sharply-angled, with three spines, one set very short, the next set slightly longer, and the last set a bit longer than the other two put together, set onto the sides of his own helmet.

Slade's armor was also colored much differently from Shara's: bright white with red patches, while Shara's was more of a dark pink with cream-colored pieces. Still, there were enough similarities between them, mostly in the facial areas, that Cassie could tell that they were the same kind of being. Generally, at least.

"Cassie, are you all right?" Slade asked, setting an armored hand on her right shoulder?

"I'm fine, Slade. Just resting a bit," she said, putting her own hand over Slade's.

With anyone else, she would have stroked that hand to try to make them feel better; but Slade's armored hand wasn't really made for stroking, with all the sharp points she could feel at the joints of his fingers, and she didn't think he would have felt anything through his armor, anyway.

"I'm going to morph now, then we'll go," she said, having regained the energy she'd used from demorphing.

"Right," Slade said, and she could hear his armored form shifting slightly behind her; probably getting ready to move again.

Focusing her thoughts on the wolf morph that she had used for almost every battle that the Animorphs had had with the Yeerks over the course of the invasion, Cassie felt the changes begin. She might not have known what was coming, but with her friends close by, Cassie was sure she would be able to handle it.

XXX

The sound of heavy, thudding footfalls coming down the hall sounded louder than they probably really were, since his rhino ears and the sense of hearing that went with them hadn't yet morphed away yet. Turning to look behind him, Jake stumbled slightly on his half-formed legs. He felt himself being caught by a thick, strong, armored arm and steadied before he could fall to the ground.

"Thlade," he slurred, his mouth and lips and tongue still morphing even as he spoke. "Gooth to see you again," he said, as the other boy helped him up to the top of the stairs; he finished morphing as the two of them reached the top.

Still, while he'd been demorphing, he'd been "treated" to the sight of one of the bullets that had been lodged in his right shoulder popping free of his morphed body as it shrank away to reveal his normal human form. The bullet itself ended up falling to the carpet, and Jake could only be thankful that Slade's hadn't been covering the part of his shoulder where the bullet emerged from.

(What are you guys doing, looking like that?) Tobias demanded, zipping by over their heads, his wings scraping the ceiling with each up-stroke; Jake saw one of his feathers flutter to the ground.

"Are they still after you?" he demanded; they could think about the guards with the guns later. He wanted to make sure that Tobias was all right before he moved onto anything else.

(Yeah, but I've lost them for now,) Tobias reported. (The room they were guarding is down the hall, then through this big, massive bedroom. You'll see a doorway on the far wall. The last time I went past, there were still a couple of guys guarding it.)

"What do we do now?"

Still feeling a bit tense from all of the things that had been going wrong, Slade's sheer over-zealousness in their defense only the most recent, it took him a moment to decide what to do. Having Cassie morph had been an impulsive decision; knowing how Slade saw their bird morphs as needing his protection – not that he wasn't right – Jake had wanted to give the older teen as few reasons as he possibly could to go off on any of the guards still stationed in this house. But, maybe that decision hadn't been so impulsive, after all.

"Morph again," he said firmly. "Combat mode. Tobias? Try to reach Rachel and Ax with thought-speak. If you get Rachel, tell her to demorph; no arguments. If you get Ax-"

"Jake, I hear people coming," Slade said, and Jake could almost feel the other boy tensing up behind him.

(Those sound like my guys,) Tobias said, sounding agitated. (You guys, get into that side room! It's unlocked. I'll lead these guys away!)

They all did so without hesitation, though he had to give Slade's arm a tug before the Teknoman would follow his lead; he knew what Slade had likely been planning, and he'd wanted to make sure to nip it in the bud. He could hear the sound of heavy, weary footsteps plodding past the room they were all hiding in.

"Where is that lousy bird?"

"What _I_ can't figure is why we're chasing it and blowing holes in the boss' walls and ceiling in the first place."

"'Cause that's what the boss _pays_ us to do," the first man said, sounding like he'd had the same discussion a few times before and he was starting to get sick of it.

By the time the two men had passed them by, Jake had already begun his tiger morph. The rhino was good for smashing things down, but if he didn't want Slade to try linking their minds together again, he needed to be able to see what he was doing. Besides, the tiger was the morph he was more used to using; nothing, or nothing but Slade or Shara in their armored forms he was beginning to suspect, could do as much damage as his tiger morph.

Marco was morphing into his gorilla, and Cassie was already a wolf. Slade hadn't gone into his usual combat morph, but the other boy was really as dangerous as he was going to get in that armor he was wearing.

(Rachel!) he shouted, not knowing if his cousin could hear him or not, but hoping that she would do what he said. (Rachel! If you can hear me, demorph now! It doesn't matter if anyone's watching you, you _need_ to demorph!) Turning his attention back to the others, he said: (All right, let's do this.)


	44. Hostage

Marco opened the door for them, since he was closer than Slade, and the four of them piled out of the room. They ran full-tilt through the halls, Slade's armored footfalls almost drowning out the sounds of their various animal morphs as they pelted around a corner and into the bedroom that Tobias had described to them. The door had been closed, but Slade's armored bulk hitting it at a full-run had bulldozed it right out of the way; the door itself was now jagged splinters on the floor, some of them crushed to powder where Slade's armored feet had come down on them.

At the far end of the room, still about thirty feet ahead of them, now, were a pair of guards stationed outside the door that Tobias had pointed out to them. Both guards were carrying weapons: the one on the right carried a shotgun, and his partner on the left carried a submachine gun. Both of them looked scared, though they hadn't broke and ran just yet.

Jake knew that his tiger morph could cover the remaining thirty feet between them in two seconds; however, he also knew that the man with the submachine gun could fire ten rounds. There was a chance that he would be killed, the rounds from the gun ripping through his tiger body like tissue paper. But, he knew that, if something like that were to happen, no force on Earth would be able to stop Slade from butchering everyone else in the house.

Besides, if the man with the submachine gun _didn't_ kill him, the sheer power of his tiger body, combined with his need to defend himself in this situation, would be the death of both men as surely as Slade himself would.

It was time for a new tactic; something of a gamble, really: (Look, you two, you really don't want to do this.)

The two men looked like they thought they were going insane. He didn't blame them, not really; talking animals weren't rally something that your average person was really equipped to deal with, mentally.

(Yes, it's me; the tiger. Don't worry about how or why. Here's all you need to know: I don't want to hurt you, but I have to get past you. Now, you may shoot me, but you won't kill me fast enough to keep me from taking you down. And, even if you _did_ kill me, you see this guy here?) To Slade, privately: (Slade, take two steps towards me.) The heavy sound of Slade's footfalls was all the confirmation he needed. (He's bulletproof,) he continued, broadcasting his thoughts to the two men in his way. (No matter what kind of damage you could do to me, or any of the other animals behind me, you wouldn't be able to scratch him. He'd kill you, and then he'd kill everyone else in this building, after I was dead. Now, I don't know what your boss is paying you for this job, but-)

"Not enough," the man on the left said, letting his submachine gun point to the floor. "Not _nearly_ enough. I can't believe I'm actually talking to animals here, but that tiger makes a lot of sense."

"Yeah, we ain't getting paid nearly enough to lay down our lives for that guy," the other man said, slinging his shotgun over his back. "We'll just take our guns and go away now, right Mr. tiger? And you don't sic that big, bulletproof, armored guy on us, all right?"

(Agreed,) he said, then to Cassie: (Keep an eye on them.)

(I will,) she said, and he relaxed slightly.

If either of those two had tried something tricky, after this, Cassie would know about it almost before they did.

(All right, Slade, I'm going to need you to open this door, now,) he said. Slade drew his lance back, obviously preparing to slice open that door just like he'd done with the other ones that they had encountered. (Slade? There's a knob.)

_(Right.)_

Armored fingers closed around the knob, turning it; Jake leaped through once Slade had pulled it open.


	45. Stalemate

The landscape that confronted him was like nothing he had ever seen on Earth: the sky overhead, something that had to be projected through some means that he wasn't familiar with, was a strange, swirling green, pierced by intermittent flashes of long, jagged lightning; scruffy plants grew from the oddly-colored soil underneath their feet; but what drew most of his attention, the most dramatic feature in the room as far as he was concerned, was the large pool at the center of the room. The pool that was filled with some kind of liquid, the pool that looked like a rippling lake of molten lead; the pool that he had seen in his nightmares ever since he'd first made the journey down to a much larger version, back when he and four others had made their choice to fight the Yeerk invasion of Earth.

There were two cages beside the Yeerk pool itself, both of them filled. One of them held Ax, halfway between the harrier morph he'd been using during their disastrous first attempt to get a look inside Fenestre's mansion; he'd obviously started demorphing, but had been stopped halfway through. He looked like some kind of nightmarish sculpture, gray feathers and patches of blue fur, a mouthless bird's face, and a still-feathered scorpion tail.

Rachel was in the cage next to his, still a perfectly ordinary-looking bald eagle.

Neither of them was moving, and his tiger senses told him that neither of them were breathing, either. He'd failed; he'd made the wrong decisions one time too many, and now his friends had paid the price for it. He was such an idiot!

Marco and Cassie came down into the room with him, and Slade moved closer, but he couldn't care about that.

_(Jake, what do we do about him?)_ Slade asked, drawing his attention to the other man standing in the room with them.

The man who had been examining a figure lying flat on her back; a figure with long, pale blonde hair, wearing a skin-tight morphing outfit. There was a Yeerk Dracon beam in a holster at his side, and in his hand was a long, slender blade. He didn't know where the blade had come from, but the Dracon beam was a dead giveaway about the man's affiliation.

Fenestre was staring at him, now; even Marco, Slade, and Cassie's presence at his side didn't make him feel any better about the situation. Not a bit. He'd screwed up, big time; Shara captured by a Controller, and Rachel and Ax both dead.

He'd never be able to forgive himself for this; not ever.

"So, not Yeerks after all," Fenestre said, after a long few moments of staring at him. "I'm to be killed by _Andalites_. Well, I suppose there is some honor in that, at least." He looked back to Shara, laying so still on the table beside him. "Still, I _would_ like to know how you managed such a feat of genetic engineering; creating a creature so resistant to Dracon fire that I needed to fire _four_ shots to incapacitate it." His eyes came back up, his gaze fixing on Slade. "To say nothing of that rather magnificent creature standing just beside you."

(What do you mean?) he demanded. (She's alive?)

"Yes, quite so," Fenestre said, his attention not wavering. "I would have thought to take her as a host, just to truly see what she was capable of, if I'd not discovered this." Fenestre lifted up Shara's right hand and jabbed the point of the long, swordlike knife he was carrying through the palm of her hand before any of them could say anything to stop him.

But, to his and probably everyone else's besides Slade's surprise, there wasn't even time for blood to start dripping down from her hand, before lines of light – bright pink this time, like the glow of her eyes and the light from her transformation – began shining out of her hand. Fenestre turned Shara's hand slightly toward them, revealing unbroken skin where there should have been a wound. There _was_ a bit of blood, but Fenestre wiped it away without even a word.

"I truly must commend you Andalites on your subtlety: creating something that appears to be the perfect host, and then adding those... whatever they are, likely killing any Yeerk foolish enough to try to take them. Truly the epitome of Andalite ruthlessness."

(Slade, what were those? Those lines on Shara's hand?) he asked, speaking privately to the Teknoman in question.

_(That's the organic circuitry that guides the transformation: Tekno-circuits. They're what shapes the look of the armor we wear,)_ Slade said, and for a few moments Jake thought he sounded confused; almost as if he'd expected Jake to know that in the first place, or something. _(Jake, do you hear something?)_

(What do you hear, Slade?) he asked, suspecting that Slade wasn't talking about Fenestre.

_(I hear someone calling me, I think. They're pretty far-off, but I... I think I'm supposed to follow them.)_

(Ignore it, Slade,) he said, making a mental note to talk to Shara about that; she'd probably know what was going on better than he did.

_(Yes, Jake.)_


	46. Negotiation

(What about the other two?) he demanded of Fenestre; he didn't have the time to wonder about what was going on with Slade. (Are they still alive?)

"Of course," Fenestre said, sounding as if he couldn't have cared less. "You can take them with you, if you want. Killing Andalites is not my lot in life, anymore."

(Really?) he asked, briefly debating whether or not to let Slade have Fenestre. It wouldn't bring Ax or Rachel back if they were really dead, but it _would_ make him feel better about the situation; if only for a little while. (My comrades certainly _look_ dead.)

Fenestre frowned, though he looked more confused than truly angry. "Nonsense. Don't you recognize bio-stasis when you see it? Your comrades are simply frozen in time. I thought you Andalites were supposed to be so much more technologically advanced than we Yeerks," he looked back to Shara, a contemplative expression on his face. "Particularly your group."

Ignoring the subtle insult that he was sure that Fenestre was aiming at him, Jake seized on the other thing that the Controller had said. It just might mean that he hadn't failed _nearly_ as bad as he thought.

(Get them out of there,) he said, a bit more harshly than he would have done with anyone who wasn't this particular Controller.

"Or what?" Fenestre asked, his tone clearly mocking. "You'll kill me? You're going to kill me, anyway."

(Why would I kill you?) he demanded; there was something he was missing, but what? Some angle he obviously hadn't considered; some way to get all of his friends out of this trap without getting any of them killed. What was it?

"I'm a Yeerk," Fenestre said, as if it was self-evident; Jake supposed that, to an Andalite, it would be. "A Controller. Although my host and I are on very good terms. I made him rich; I wrote his famous Web browser. We've been partners all these years."

(Yeerks don't _have_ partners,) he snapped, remembering all of the people that had been enslaved during the course of the invasion; remembering Tom.

"No," Fenestre drawled, with a mocking laugh. "We don't." Fenestre's expression turned sharp again, shrewdly considering them. "Who sent you after me, anyway? Have you made some kind of a deal with my brother?"

(You brother?)

"You are obviously Andalites," Fenestre's eyes flicked over to Slade again. "_Most_ of you, anyway. No one else has your amazing morphing technology. But, I have to ask myself, why would Andalites go to so much trouble to kill me? _Me_, of all Yeerks?" Fenestre looked back to Shara, then over to Slade again. "Did you make some kind of a bargain with my brother for test-subjects? Are these two the only survivors of your experiments?" Jake shuddered briefly, uncomfortably reminded of the Radam. "And _what_ is so fascinating about my door?" Fenestre demanded, obviously directing that question to Slade.

(Slade, what's going on?) he asked in private thought-speak, looking back at the Teknoman as he shifted restlessly on his armored feet.

_(The call, it's getting stronger; more forceful. You really can't hear it? It's pulling at me; hard to resist.)_ Slade looked back over his shoulder at the door again.

(Can you block it out?) he asked, wondering for a moment just what Slade could be hearing, before realizing that it was probably something to do with the Radam; maybe even Darkon himself.

_(I don't know; maybe?)_

(Do it,) he said, wanting to something else for the older boy, but not knowing just what that something could be. (I still need you here.)

_(Yes, Jake.)_


	47. Bond of Brothers

(This is weird,) he heard Marco said, and Jake forced his attention back to what was going on in front of them; there was really nothing more he could do for Slade.

(This guy is cornered, you can see it in his eyes,) Cassie said, obviously not having heard the exchange between him and Slade; that was good, since he didn't want to worry her with things that neither of them could do anything about. (He thinks we're here to kill him, and he probably knows we could. We need to find out what'd really going on, here. We need to know more.)

Pacing a bit, since he was starting to get just as restless in his tiger morph as Slade was right now, though obviously for much different reasons, Jake decided to give just a few kernels of truth to Fenestre. Maybe he could find out something that would make this mission worth something, after all. (We traced you here from the Web page. The one about Yeerks.)

"Yes," Fenestre said, nodding slightly, a thoughtful expression on his face. "But, why in the world would you... of course!" the expression on Fenestre's face became one of understanding and not a small amount of amusement. "You were looking for more allies! You weren't certain, were you? You thought that perhaps it was all real, that somehow the humans were forming a resistance to the invasion of their planet. You came here to see if I was with you, or against you!" Fenestre laughed after he said that last part, he laughed in that sick way that someone did when they were trying not to break down. "Shall I tell you now, who and what I am, Andalites?"

Waiting as calmly as he could, with one of his friends and fellow Animorphs completely unconscious, two others frozen in some kind of "bio-stasis", a third being mentally pulled on by something that made even Visser Three himself look tame by comparison, and the others in danger from just being in this place, Jake faced down the Controller in front of them.

"My Yeerk name is Esplin Nine-Four-Double-Six. Note the 'double six'. Do you know what it means?"

(No,) Jake said; he wasn't anywhere near in the mood for this kind of crap.

"A double designation means that I am a twin. That two Yeerks grew from the same grub. When there are twins, one is considered the prime, and the other the lesser. I am the lesser. My twin was the prime; to him go the best assignments, the best hosts, the rank, the power. And, to me go only what I can _take_," Fenestre emphasized this last word by clenching his right fist, the hilt of the knife gripped tightly in his hand. "In some cases, brothers can share; sometimes, twins can even become allies. But not with _my_ brother; my brother is power-mad, or maybe just mad now. He lest me nothing; he assigned me to a poor, unimportant human host. This Joe Bob Fenestre, a lowly programmer working in the bowels of a telephone company," Fenestre shook his head, gritting his teeth as he began to pace; he paused for a moment, seeming to consider the long knife in his right hand, then jammed it point-down into the table where Shara was still laid out.

The knife sunk in a good three inches.

"Well, that wasn't good enough. I wanted more, and if I couldn't have it as a Yeerk, then I'd have it as a human. I ended up making an alliance with my host. We were two of a kind; two losers in the shadows of our betters. I used Yeerk technical knowledge to make Fenestre rich, and in the process, I created Web Access America; which made me the greatest source of information on humans there was. I knew secrets my brother could only guess at."

(You sift email,) he said, as the realization came to him. (You spy on chat rooms.)

"You know human computer terminology," Fenestre said, his eyes fixing on them again.

Jake tensed, swallowing hard; he'd slipped up there, sounding more "human" than he could afford, speaking to a Controller. He'd have to bluff. (We Andalites are a small, hunted band on this planet. Knowledge means survival.)

Fenestre's eyes fixed on Slade again, the expression on his face going flat. "Of course you are."

Jake didn't know if that was meant to be sarcastic or not, but Fenestre continued speaking before he could put much thought into it. "I became in invaluable asset to the invasion. All by myself, I had become a powerful human with access to vast amounts of information. But, of course, my brother couldn't tolerate _that_. He had me declared a traitor. He cut me off from the Kandrona; he'd have killed me, if he could. For the crime of being as he was, he'd have murdered me."

As Fenestre's eyes bored into him, Jake realized who Fenestre's Yeerk's brother was, who he _had_ to be.

(Oh, my God,) Cassie whispered, obviously having figured it out at the same time as he had.

"Yes, only one twin can be great," Fenestre spat bitterly, his fingers clenching on the hilt of the knife, almost as if he wanted to rip if back out of the table and use it on someone. "Only one of us could be the mighty Visser Three." Fenestre turned his attention back to them, after the stunned silence between them had been allowed to stretch for a few, long moments. "I gather from your silence, that you know my brother."

(We have fought him before,) he said, taking care to sound as "Andalite" as he could manage.


	48. Cannibalism

"And yet, you're still alive. Not many can say that," Fenestre said; Jake couldn't quite be sure whether he was being sincere or sarcastic. "My compliments."

(How do you survive without having access to the Yeerk pool? I see you have managed to construct a replica here in this room, but surely you haven't managed to create your own Kandrona to supply the vital Kandrona rays.)

"Well, well; so you know a Yeerk pool when you see one," Fenestre said, nodding in thought. "And you also know about the Kandrona." Fenestre shrugged, as if the topic didn't particularly matter to him. "I have managed to find a way to survive without the Kandrona. That's not important, however. What _is_ important is... what happens next?"

(He's lying,) Cassie said, as usual picking up on something he had missed. (Or at least, he's not telling the whole truth. There's something about how he's still getting Kandrona rays; something he doesn't want to talk about.)

Jake nodded, in spite of the fact that he knew it would look odd to Fenestre and the Yeerk inside his head. His next words, however, were to Fenestre himself: (Your brother must know where you are. He could kill you anytime he wants. He could hit this house from orbit and leave nothing but a smoldering crater behind.)

"No," Fenestre said, with a shake of his head. "That would be for too conspicuous; some idiot human with a camcorder could manage to record the whole thing."

(He could send in Hork-Bajir. They'd cut through the guards, just as we did. Or, he could just come himself. If he wanted to kill you, he would. He could. He clearly hasn't. Why is that?)

"Clever, clever Andalites," Fenestre said, with a coldly amused smile. "so good with your computers, and your magnificent Dome ships," his smile widened slightly, becoming more amused still. "To say nothing of your skills in... other matters. You still think you're the lords of the galaxy, don't you? We spread from planet to planet, and you keep falling back. And yet, your arrogance is so unbelievable that you never pause to consider that maybe you're not quite so clever, after all."

(Cassie's right,) Marco said. (He's weaseling. He's trying to distract you from something.)

(Yeah, you're both right,) Jake said, then he turned his attention back to Fenestre. (If you want to live, answer my questions. Tell me the truth, and you can leave unharmed. Lie...)

Slade shifted restlessly just then, obviously growing more agitated the longer he was forced to stand still in his transformed state. There was really nothing Jake could do for the other boy, he knew; he couldn't exactly have Slade morph in front of a known Controller, and just having the older boy change back into his human form would leave him in basically the same situation that Shara was in.

No matter what, they couldn't afford to let Fenestre see another human face.

"I suppose I'll just have to rely on Andalite honor," Fenestre said mockingly, after he had given Jake a long, hard look. "Very well. My brother has not killed me because I have information he wants and needs. He doesn't want me dead, he wants me screaming in the torture-chamber aboard his Blade ship. You see, I have found a way to survive without the Kandrona. And Visser Three would give _anything_ to know how that was done." Fenestre caressed the pommel of the long knife jammed into the table next to Shara, causing the odd, glittering, diamond-shaped metal pendant to swing back and forth. He looked at the swinging pendant for a moment, then turned his attention back to them. "There's a way to process and refine Kandrona rays from another source. It can be made into an edible product. A food, so to speak, that my human host can consume and I will in-turn by provided with needed nutrients."

(You're lying,) Jake said, feeling a cold chill creeping over him; the Yeerks' need to feed at the Yeerk pool, a centralized location where he and the other Animorphs had been able to cause damage on a fairly large scale, was the one, greatest weakness that they had. (If there _was_ a way to keep Yeerks alive without Kandrona rays from the Yeerk pools, that information would make you invulnerable, even to your brother.)

The cold smile on Fenestre's face became even colder, though Jake didn't know quite how that was possible. "Oh, maybe not. For one thing, there is a long, involved process involved. But that's not the problem. The problem is the raw material. The raw material is my brother Yeerks; I must kill and consume and process and consume a Yeerk every three days to survive. I have become a cannibal, for the sake of my own survival."

(Holy crap,) Marco said, in the thought-speak version of a mutter.

"My brother would use this process for himself. But, as you can imagine, it would never become popular around the Empire as a whole."

(You really _are_ Visser Three's twin,) Jake said, feeling sick. Then, after a few moments of thought, he felt sicker. (How do you obtain the needed Yeerks?)

Fenestre shrugged. "What do you think that silly Yeerk forum is about? That absurd mix of fact and fiction? I control Web Access America; I know the identity of all the people behind those screen names. The chat room is full of different types: people who are actually Controllers, trying to throw suspicious humans off-track; humans who have actually discovered our little invasion and are trying to rally opposition to us; and then, there's me. I spot the Controllers; I monitor the humans who have found family members that they suspect of being Controllers. I keep tabs on the real, gung-ho Yeerk fighters who identify potential Controllers. I track down those screen-names; I find the Yeerks behind them. One every three days; ten a month."

(That's cool with me,) Marco said, sounding like he was trying to sound tough; Jake knew better, though. (Give the man a pat on the back, and let's get Rachel, Ax, and Shara _out_ of here.)

Jake felt the same way; Fenestre's Yeerk might have been a disgusting creature, and his method of survival might have been morally reprehensible, but he was severely cutting down on the number of viable Yeerks among the invaders' forces.


	49. Decision

(How are you getting the Yeerks from their human hosts?!) Cassie demanded, baring the teeth of her wolf morph; she wanted to think that she had been wrong, that even someone with Visser Three's twin wrapped around their brain couldn't be _that_ evil.

But, it all depended on his answer; more than Fenestre's own life depended on that.

"How am I getting the Yeerks from their hosts?" Fenestre echoed, his gaze as empty as the black pit he called a heart; she should have known that no one who had anything to do with Visser Three could have been anything but evil. "How do you _think_ I get them?"

She almost leaped at him for that; she wanted to rip out his throat, to watch him drown in his own blood. To make that monster feel the same kind of fear that he had inflicted on so many innocent people. But, she had something better; someone he could never be prepared to face, someone who wouldn't hesitate when he saw the fear building in Fenestre's eyes.

(Slade, kill him!)

(What?) Jake demanded; she ignored him.

(You heard me, Slade: attack! Butcher him! Slice him to pieces!)

Looking over at the large, red-on-white armored figure standing just slightly in front of Jake, Cassie saw Slade looking from her and back to Jake.

_(What do you want me to do, Jake?)_

_What?!_ She demanded, careful not to direct her thoughts to anyone else. (Slade, what do you think you're doing?! He's evil; kill him!)

_(Jake?)_

(Steady, Slade,) Jake said. (Thanks for not... you know, doing anything crazy.)

_(Why would I? You countermanded the orders Cassie gave. She can only give me orders if you've been knocked out of commission, or you back her up,)_ Slade said, sounding confused about the whole thing, but not like he was going to actually ask any questions.

Growling deep in her throat, knowing that Slade wouldn't be of any help to her – at least not _now_ – since there was no way that Jake would ever back up _that_ kind of order – no matter _how _much Fenestre deserved it – Cassie ran at him. She'd just have to deal with him herself, that was all.

(Slade, stop her!)

Armored fingers closed on the scruff of her neck, almost before Jake had finished speaking, and as she twisted powerlessly in Slade's grip, Cassie snarled. She wasn't angry with Slade, at least not _that_ much, since she was starting to understand that he would only act in combat when he was given a direct order. But Jake...

(What are you _doing_?!) she demanded, letting herself hang loose in Slade's grasp; there was no way that she was going to be able to move his armored bulk if he didn't want to be moved.

(We aren't here to slaughter this guy,) Jake said; she didn't know how he could be so calm under these kind of circumstances. For a moment, just a moment, she hated him for that. (I told him we wouldn't.)

(Do you know what he's doing, Jake? Do you _understand_?!)

(I know. I _know_!) Jake screamed, clearly frustrated. (But, I told him he was safe; I promised. Besides-)

(No!) she shouted; she _couldn't_ hear something like that. Not from Jake. (Don't say it, Jake. If you say that, I won't be able to deal with you anymore. So _don't_ say it.)

There was a long, awkward silence between them, before Jake spoke again. (I wasn't going to say what you think.)

She knew he was lying, so she didn't give him the satisfaction of an answer.

(I- I don't think...)

(That kid, Gump,) she said, before Jake could start making excuses. (That kid who was worried about his dad; that lonely little kid. That's who this monster goes after, Jake. Not some abstract person with no face and no name. He'll wait until Gump does something stupid; till he confesses his fears to his Controller father, and his father makes _him_ a Controller, too. Then Fenestre will go after them.)

(What do you expect _me_ to do?) Jake demanded. (You want me to kill this guy because he's evil? Or maybe you want me to send Slade after him? Why don't you kill him yourself?)

(Either of your forms would be better at it than mine,) she said, after a long pause; it was true, but it wasn't quite the whole truth, and for a moment Cassie berated herself for her dishonesty.

It seemed like she was telling more and more lies lately, and it just seemed to be getting easier each time; Cassie didn't like what that said about her.

(You want one of us to kill him _for_ you?) Jake asked, in that soft voice he used when he was beginning to get angry. (Is _that_ what you want?)

Fenestre was just staring at them; Jake as he bristled at her, Slade as he continued to hold her by the scruff of her neck, and her as she growled at him. His eyes were darting from one of them to the other, clearly trying to figure out what was going on. She didn't know if he could really do it, but she didn't want to give him the chance, in any case.

Slade released his grip on her then, probably at Jake's orders if everything she had learned about him was right; she had a feeling it was. Jake backed off slightly, turning to face Fenestre again.


	50. Loathing and Self-loathing

(My comrade has lost friends in battle against your people,) Jake said, obviously trying to sound as detached and unemotional as Ax sounded under most circumstances. (She is emotional.)

"We've all lost friends in this unpleasantness," Fenestre said, with an unimpressed nod.

(Release my three comrades,) Jake said firmly. (We'll let you live; we'll walk away. As long as you remain in this house, we will not harm you. However, in all good faith, I will warn you: if any of us ever catch up with you in the outside world, that protection will not exist.)

It was a stupid threat; something that Jake probably only said to make himself feel better. But Cassie wasn't about to leave it at that. She'd be back, and next time Jake wasn't going to be able to stop her.

Ax and Rachel were released from their stasis, and Fenestre did something to Shara that woke her back up; the two of them locked eyes for a long moment, before Shara turned to face the rest of them.

(It's good to have you back with us again, Shara,) she said, relieved, even as she heard Rachel and Jake talking to each other.

_(Yeah; it's nice to be back. A bit strange, though. I can definitely say that I wasn't expecting to wake up in a place like this. You'll fill me in about what went on while I was out?)_

(I will,) she said, as Shara made her way over to where all of them were standing.


	51. Unkind Farewells

He'd finally managed to get Rachel to see reason, and to start demorphing, and all of them were now preparing to move out. Fenestre was as cocky as any Yeerk, seeing them off with a glib little "perhaps we'll meet again" as the eight of them got back to their feet – or other appendages – and backed up out of the room.

(Slade, get out of that armor and into your panther morph,) he said, once they had all made it out of Fenestre's line-of-sight. (Shara, I think it'd be best if you morphed, too. We're going to want all the speed we can possibly get, if we're going to be able to make it out of here.)

It probably wasn't entirely necessary, except for the part about Slade himself morphing, of course, but it would make him feel at least a _bit_ better about what he was allowing to happen. This decision was on him: _he_ was the one allowing Fenestre to go free, even when he knew just how dangerous the Controller was. Even though he knew that Visser Three's brother was just as much of a monster as the Visser himself.

By the time the eight of them hade made it to the stairs, Rachel had almost regained her human form, and Slade and Shara were completely in their own combat morphs. Tobias was flying, at least as well as he could inside even such a large building as this, over all of their heads as they made their way out. That was something to be glad for, at least.

He hadn't _completely_ failed; it just felt like it at the moment.

The wreckage of the house passed by them on either side, and Jake tried not to think about what he was leaving behind; what he was allowing to live. They passed into the yard fairly quickly, and Jake noted with a distant feeling of relief that the corpse of the guard was missing. He didn't know what exactly had been done with it, but he was perfectly happy not to have to see it again.

By the time they made it out under the cover of the trees, Rachel had managed to demorph completely, so he suggested to the others that they do the same. He knew that Slade would take it as an order, but there was really nothing he could do about that; he knew that by now, and knew that he would have to deal with that, sooner or later. Given the kind of luck the Animorphs seemed to have, it would probably be sooner.

"What happened back there?" Rachel demanded, gesturing impatiently to the still-visible form of Fenestre's mansion. "Someone _ripped_ that place. Was there some big fight, and I missed it? Oh man! I can't _believe_ I missed a big fight. So, what happened?"

"Someone will fill you in later," he said tersely, not feeling _nearly_ up to discussing what had happed; with anyone, really, but particularly with Rachel.

"Was that guy a Controller, or not?" Rachel asked, apparently unwilling to let the subject be dropped even in spite of how much Jake really, really wanted it to be. "Was he a good guy, or a bad guy?"

He barked a laugh at that, feeling as bitter as he ever had after a battle. He and Cassie briefly looked toward one another, but neither of them could look into the other's eyes; Jake didn't know her reasons, but he definitely knew his own. "Rachel, I don't even know which _I _am, anymore."

That pretty much killed any further attempts at conversation; he was glad for that, since he wasn't anywhere near in the mood to talk to anyone at the moment.

They all took on their usual bird morphs for getting back to the barn, and as he spiraled up into the air after his running take-off, Jake tried to put the events of this day behind him. He deeply did _not_ want to think about all of the things that he'd seen, or heard. Or even, especially, how close he'd come to getting three of his people killed; nor the fact that it had only been blind, dumb luck that had prevented it.

He didn't want to think about any of that, and yet Jake was perfectly aware of the fact that he was going to be haunted by these particular mistakes for a very long time.


	52. False Normality

While she took the lead, guiding Shara and Slade back to the only real home that either of them had anymore, Cassie was also finalizing her plans concerning Fenestre. She'd known ever since she found out about what he really was that she was going to have to do _something_ about him; no one that dangerous deserved to live, no one like that deserved to be able to threaten innocent people. And, she had the perfect person to ensure that Fenestre was never allowed to do anything like that, ever again.

(Slade, once Shara goes to sleep, I want you to meet up with me outside of the barn. Be in your raven morph; we're going to be traveling by air.)

(Yes, Cassie,) he said, as calmly as if what she had asked him to do was perfectly normal; or at least perfectly acceptable as far as he was concerned.

The three of them continued on their way, the ground passing quickly under them as they flew, and Cassie put her plans for Fenestre out of the forefront of her mind. There would be time enough to deal with him later, she would make sure of it, but for the moment she had other things to think about.

When they were finally above her house and the barn that sat next to it, Cassie folded her wings and dove down toward the open window of the hayloft. She needed to change into her normal clothes and at least make an _appearance_ for her parents, or they would be bound to start getting suspicious of the cover-stories she was giving them.

She was getting sick enough of lying to her parents, she didn't want to add more things for them to question her about.

Landing just beside the clothes that she had left behind when she morphed for the first time, Cassie demorphed quickly, dressed in her normal clothes and made an effort to look presentable. Putting on the shoes that she had hidden with the rest of her clothes, she made her way out of the barn and down the path a bit. She wanted it to look plausible, like she _could_ have been dropped off by Rachel's mom the way she was going to say she had been.

Standing out by the driveway for a few moments, as if she was waving to Rachel's mother's car the way she'd always done when the woman dropped her off, Cassie took a deep breath and started making her way back to her house. It was time to get the rest of this done. Time to tell a few more half-truths, so she could take care of something that Jake should have let her deal with when it first came up. So that she could make personally sure that Visser Three's twin would never be able to threaten another innocent person, ever again.

When she made it back inside, Cassie found that her house had that particular, empty feeling it always had when there was nobody home. Making her way over to the refrigerator, which was where everyone hung notes that they wanted the rest of the family to notice, Cassie read off the correspondence there. Apparently, her mother was staying late at The Gardens; there was a particularly difficult surgery that she had been asked to oversee. Apparently, she wouldn't be back until late.

As Cassie was contemplating the note that her mother had left, she heard the front door open and close again swiftly. Making her way to the front of the house, Cassie smiled slightly when she caught sight of her father making his way inside.

"Hey, Cassie!" he called enthusiastically, reaching out to enfold her in a hug as she came up to him.

"Hey, dad," she said, smiling as she hugged him back.

"I guess you must have noticed that note your mother left for you," he said, pulling back so he could look her in the eyes as he continued to speak.

"Yeah; the surgery. I hope all of the animals are going to be all right," she said honestly.

"I'm sure they will. Your mother's the best in the business, after all," he said, a proud smile still on his face. "Why don't we go have some dinner, and you can tell me about your day?"

"Actually, Dad, I have a lot of homework to do," she said, the half-truth coming to her easier than she liked to think about. "I was just going to make myself a couple sandwiches and eat them while I worked."

"Well, I suppose it _is_ important to keep on top of your homework," her dad said, even as the two of them made their way towards the kitchen. "Just try not to work yourself _too_ hard, all right? You're a very responsible girl, Cassie, but I want you to remember that you have a life outside of your obligations, too."

Smiling as best she could, even as the guilt about what she'd been doing for so long continued to gnaw at her, Cassie made her way over to the 'fridge and gathered the ingredients that she would need for a pair of turkey sandwiches. Slade had always seemed to like those best, and she wanted to do something nice for him, considering what she was going to ask him to do not a few hours from now.

She was perfectly aware that there wasn't a chance of her being able to bring the sandwiches that she was going to make out to the barn so that he could eat them, but she also knew that that wasn't going to be so much of a problem, considering what she had told him to do while they were both on their way back. She knew that he would be ready to move out when he got back; she would only have to get his attention and he would come right to her.

It was kind of strange, knowing that – as long as Jake wasn't around – she could give Slade any kind of orders and he would just do whatever she asked without any kind of hesitation; it was kind of unnerving, if you thought about it too much.

Once she had finished making the sandwiches, Cassie poured herself a glass of milk and made her way up to her room. Once she was there, she set down the plate and her glass and then made her way over to her window. Slade was flying around the barn in his raven morph, obviously searching for her out there.


	53. Solemn Vows

Opening the window before he could fly out of her line of sight, Cassie waved to get his attention. Mouthing the words "come inside" once she had, Cassie stepped back as Slade fluttered to land softly in her room.

"I think you might want to demorph and eat, Slade," she said softly, so that her voice wouldn't carry beyond the confines of her room.

This was a precarious position she was putting herself in; if her dad heard her talking to someone, and more importantly if he heard someone _answering_, he was bound to come and investigate. That wouldn't have been good for either of them.

Slade landed on the floor in front of her and swiftly began demorphing; he looked just as startling as any of the others did when _they _morphed, but Cassie had long since gotten used to the appearance of her fellow Animorphs. It was kind of funny, though: Shara could be just as graceful in her morphs as Cassie herself.

Slade wasn't Shara, though, and in this case Cassie was glad for it. Shara would have probably questioned what they were about to do, or at least tried to talk Cassie out of it. Besides, the other girl hadn't even been conscious for Fenestre's explanation about his baited-trap of a website. She wouldn't really know just _why_ Fenestre had to die for what he had done to all of the innocent people that he had lured in, just so _he_ could live for three more days.

Fenestre and his Yeerk both had to be dealt with; there was no redemption after something _this_ horrible.

Once Slade was finished with his meal, something that took slightly longer than for Cassie to finish the glass of milk that she had poured for herself, she stood up and faced him.

"Slade, I need you to promise me that you'll follow the orders I give you, no matter what they are," she said; just because she had reason to suspect that he would, that was no reason not to be sure.

"Why wouldn't I?" he asked, in a tone that suggested that he thought she was kind of strange for asking, though he wasn't about to say anything.

"Thanks," she said, looking down slightly; she knew that Jake probably wouldn't approve of what she was about to do, but some things needed to be done.

Fenestre _couldn't_ be allowed to kill one more innocent person; couldn't be allowed to get people captured and made into Controllers just so he could kill them to prolong his own, filthy life. He _couldn't_. She wouldn't let him.

"All right; morph back and follow me," she said, already beginning to concentrate on the Osprey morph that she had used earlier that day.

"Right."

There wasn't a bit of hesitation in Slade's voice, and not a single pause before he started morphing; that kind of loyalty was almost enough to make Cassie feel a bit guilty about what she was going to be asking – not even _asking_, really, but telling – Slade to do when they made it back to Fenestre's mansion. Still, when she thought about what Fenestre was actually _doing_ to keep himself alive, any feelings of guilt that she might have been feeling vanished entirely.

She wasn't going to _make_ Slade do anything, after all; he'd only be coming with her because she asked.

Once both of them had finished morphing, with Cassie finding out the rather interesting fact that Slade was actually _faster_ at it than she was, she lead Slade up and out of her bedroom window and away from her house. Their trip back to Fenestre's was silent, even when she suggested that the two of them land and demorph so that they wouldn't be at risk of overstaying their two-hour time limit, Slade didn't really _say_ anything. Cassie was kind of grateful for that, she found, since even as certain as she was that this had to be done, Cassie still found herself having second thoughts.

When they finally returned to the airspace surrounding Fenestre's mansion, Cassie wasn't surprised to see the grounds swarming with guards. She wasn't particularly _pleased_ to see that, but after what had gone on earlier today, she would have honestly been more surprised if that _hadn't_ been the case.

(All right, Slade, this is as far as we go in these morphs,) she said, using her Osprey morph's vision – which was good enough for her purposes even in the slowly-fading light of early-evening – to pick out a good landing-spot in a thick cluster of trees.

They were far enough away from the guards' patrol-routs that Cassie was at least reasonably sure that none of them would come to investigate the bright flash of light that Slade's transformation gave off. At least, not until it was entirely too late for them to actually _do_ anything about it. She was counting on that, really; there was nothing that anyone human, or many Yeerks for that matter, could do to stop Slade once he was in that strange armor of his.

(Follow me, and start demorphing when I do,) she said, folding her wings and letting herself fall out of the sky.

_(Right.)_


	54. Final Judgment

Landing with a rustle that would have been far too quiet to register for anyone human, Cassie immediately began her demorph just as Slade landed and began his own. She was soon back in her normal form, and feeling even shorter than usual compared to Slade's tall, toned form standing right next to her.

The slightly eerie glow of his green eyes, as Slade scanned the surrounding terrain for anyone who might conceivably pose a threat to the two of them, was perversely comforting under the circumstances. Still, now wasn't the time to get distracted, Cassie sternly reminded herself; the both of them had work to do; though Slade more than her, she had to admit.

"All right, Slade; transform," she said, drawing the older boy's attention back to her once he had apparently satisfied himself that there weren't any threats in the surrounding area. "I'll give you further instructions after I morph."

Slade nodded sharply, before he closed his eyes.

Closing her own eyes, Cassie focused on the only morph that would be able to stay close enough to Slade that he wouldn't feel the need to attack anyone and everyone in his path just to protect her. The changes came fast, just like she needed them to, and soon she was a small, gray squirrel.

(Slade, pick me up,) she said, clamping down on her squirrel morph's panicky instincts as Slade's huge-seeming armored hand reached down to pick her up the way she'd asked.

Studying the huge, armored figure in front of her, even as Slade himself seemed to be doing the same to her, Cassie found the best spot for her current needs.

(Tuck me into your collar, Slade, and then let's go.)

_(Right,)_ he said calmly, gently tucking her into the space between his torso and neck.

Her squirrel morph was just small, and flexible, enough to comfortably fit into the smallish, semi-cramped space between Slade's neck and the oversized, armored collar that stuck out nearly to his armored shoulders.

(All right, Slade, let's go. And, try not to kill anyone who's not actively threatening you, Slade.)

_(All right,)_ Slade said, and then Cassie heard and then felt the heavy, steady thunder of Slade's armored footfalls.

Peeking out of the small, v-shaped space between the two pieces of Slade's collar, Cassie watched as the two of them closed in on the house. There had been some sturdy-looking wooden planks nailed to the doors, but Slade's smashing into them with the kind of force that his momentum imparted to him blew them right off their moorings. They were inside the building now, and Cassie couldn't help but feel a certain sense of vindication when she thought about that.

Nothing would be able to stop Slade now that he was in his armor, and since Jake wasn't here to give him any orders to the contrary, Slade wasn't going to stop on his own.

Slade, true to the promise that he had made her, was quick to knock the guards aside with the flat of his lance, or just his armored fists, but he hadn't killed a single one of them so far. That was good, just because these people worked for a creature like Fenestre didn't mean they deserved to die. They were probably just in it for the money, anyway.

There was only one person, one _entity_ here, that deserved to die, and Cassie was going to make sure that he got what was coming to him; no matter _what_ Jake said.

Watching from her slightly uncomfortable perch as Slade continued his rampage through Fenestre's mansion, Cassie would have smiled in grim satisfaction if she had been capable of smiling at all; so far, so good.


	55. Dual Assault

The sense of one of his lost warriors, the same one that he had sensed so strongly earlier this very day, brought Darkon's focus firmly back to the present.

_(Gunnar, report to me at once,)_ he ordered.

While he might not have known just what kind of circumstances could have made it possible for Slade to resist his mental summons when he had given it, such was _not_ his only option for retrieving his lost warrior. It was simply the least aggressive of those at his disposal.

_(Here, sir. What do you need from me?)_

_(Slade has made himself known again,)_ he said, diverting some of his attention to tracking the mental signature from his errant warrior so that he would be better able to direct Gunnar when the time came. _(You are to retrieve him. Go now.)_

_(Yes, sir.)_

His Guide didn't sound particularly pleased about the prospect, but Darkon knew better than most how the young human felt about him. He did not particularly _care_, since pleased about his mission or not Gunnar was one of his Teknomen and was hence bound to obey him, but he knew. The little quasi-human would come to learn his proper place given time, of course.

XXX

Another door was blown off its hinges as Slade hit the thing at full-tilt, and Cassie was starting to wonder just where Fenestre was. She didn't think he would have left his mansion so easily. He'd implied that he had nowhere else to go, that Visser Three and his allies would hunt him down if he so much as showed his face anywhere with a strong Yeerk presence, so that begged the question of just where he _was_.

_(Cassie, I hear something,)_ Slade said, sounding preoccupied.

(What is it, Slade?)

_(I can't really be sure without seeing it, but it sounds like it's coming from below us.)_

_Oh, of course!_ She thought, almost wishing that she could palm her face; of course Fenestre would have an underground portion to his mansion. He'd have wanted somewhere that he could go in the event that he was discovered by Visser Three or any Yeerk associated with him. Somewhere he could feel safe; somewhere that was even more completely under his control than even the building they were both currently standing in.

(Can you get us down there quickly, Slade?)

_(Yeah.)_

She felt it when Slade's vast, armored bulk moved, and she _heard_ it when he wrenched the floor beneath them wide open. The shock of his landing was blunted by her smaller body, but she still felt the impact from it. She heard it, too. It was actually a bit louder than when Slade had been opening the floor.

Watching her perspective change as Slade rose back to his feet, Cassie felt a definite sense of vindication; Fenestre wasn't going to be able to hide anymore. Slade would hunt him down, just like he had done to all of those innocent people Fenestre had killed, and then Slade would make sure that Fenestre would never be able to threaten anyone else.

Ever again.

The sound of Slade's armored footfalls echoing off the metal walls must have been ominous, Cassie knew that _she_ wouldn't have wanted hear them if she hadn't known just who it was that was making them, and even with all she knew about Slade, it was still kind of creepy. She hoped Fenestre was afraid now, hoped that he felt some measure of the terror that all of those people he had killed had felt when he had betrayed them to serve his own interests.

She wanted that monster to know what true helplessness felt like, wanted him to experience it for himself as he died; she wanted him to _know_ he was beaten.

The sound of a Dracon beam firing brought Cassie's attention back to the present, and the sound of Slade's enraged growl gave her at least some idea of where the blast had come from.

(Fenestre!)

"I expected one of you Andalites to come back!" There was another sound of Dracon fire, and this time Cassie could see it almost seeming to splash off of Slade's raised arm.

Resisting the urge to mock Fenestre for his helplessness, something that all of his victims had probably felt, Cassie watched as Slade moved inexorably forward. By whatever means, Fenestre's reign of terror _would_ end today.

XXX

The sense that pretty much every Teknoman had of one another was growing stronger, something that Gunnar wasn't particularly happy about. Slade had _escaped_, after all, something that Gunnar doubted that he would ever be able to do. Darkon's holds over him were many and varied, some of them self-imposed, but the strongest and most inescapable were the telepathic powers of the Warlord and the Radam mind-parasite burrowed into the back of his neck.

Gunnar knew that there was nothing he could do to resist Darkon's control when the Warlord decided to rein him in, and he hated himself for it.

The trail leading him to Slade seemed to end at a mansion, a huge mansion out in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by what seemed to be several buildings dedicated to its upkeep; a huge mansion that bore the unmistakable signs of being besieged by a Teknoman.

Landing, forcing himself not to think about just what he was going to be doing soon, what he was going to be making possible, Gunnar moved forward. There were people in front of him, most likely guards or something like that, and almost before their attention could turn to him, Gunnar slaughtered them. There wasn't a human alive who could outfight a Teknoman, and this was just more proof of that.

Drawing his bow, Gunnar blasted through the wall in front of him and moved into the building.

There was a huge hole in the floor, making it plainly obvious just where Slade had gone, so Gunnar jumped down into the hole- and was immediately fired upon by some kind of red laser beam. There was a middle-aged man just visible behind Slade's left shoulder, at least for a few seconds before the two of them dodged around each other, switching positions almost completely. Slade had his lancer out, and was trying to carve up the man in front of him.

The man that was holding the laser that had inadvertently been fired at him, he now saw.

"Sorry, am I interrupting something?" he called, drawing the attention of both combatants.

"Another one of your allies, Andalite?" the old man demanded.

Tilting his head slightly, a bit confused over the nonsense word that the old man had said, Gunnar decided that – whatever it was – it wasn't important. "I'm not here for you, old man. I'm here for him," he said, pointing to Slade. "C'mon, Slade; it's time to go now."

Slade's eyes, glowing through the visor of his helmet, were the kind of bright green that no Radam Teknoman could have ever had. Gunnar recalled his own, once-brown eyes; the Radam mind-parasite had changed them to red, just like every other Teknoman on their side.

"You… you _do_ seem kind of familiar," Slade said, tilting his own head slightly.

"Good," he said, even though there wasn't anything particularly good about the situation. "Come with me, then," he said, holding out his hand.

"I can't," Slade said; Gunnar raised his eyebrows under his helmet.

_That_ certainly hadn't been the answer he was expecting. "Why's that?"

"I have to deal with him," Slade said, running off after the middle-aged man with the laser.

The one who had been at least smart enough to take the opportunity to escape while he had been trying – not very hard, he had to admit – to get Slade to come back to Darkon with him. Deciding that it would be in his best interests not to go back to Darkon without making a bit more of an effort than he had, Gunnar followed after Slade. His heart might not have been in it, but Darkon wasn't one to accept any excuses.

Running after Slade, following both the sound of heavy, armored footsteps and the mental sense that all Teknomen had of each other, Gunnar sighed; he didn't want to do this, but he knew that he didn't really have a choice.

XXX

When that new person had shown up, someone that Slade had said was another Teknoman, Cassie had been worried for a few moments that he would attack. Having two Teknomen fighting in such close quarters wouldn't have been good for anyone, but what the other Teknoman had _done_ was just confusing. Just flat-out telling Slade to come with him, and probably surprised when he didn't… she didn't know what to make of him.

He didn't _seem_ dangerous, at least not any more than Fenestre at the moment, but for all that he _was_ still a Teknoman; he had to be working for the Radam.

A sudden explosion, powerful enough to send Fenestre crashing into the far wall, startled Cassie out of her contemplative mood. (What was _that_?)

_(That new Teknoman has explosive arrows,)_ Slade said, like that was nothing to be surprised by; just something to take note of.

And sure, to a _Teknoman_ it might have been… (Exploding _arrows_? Well, tell him not to fire in confined spaces like, this. That blast nearly burned my whiskers. Don't tell him _that_, though.)

_(Right,)_ Slade said, and a few moments later, Cassie saw the other Teknoman coming back into her live-of-sight.

He looked nothing at all like Slade, but she was starting to suspect that every Teknoman's armor was individualized to the same degree. This new Teknoman's armor was a shiny, forest green. His faceplate was silver, and part of it seemed to be covering his right eye, or at least there was _some_ kind of a silvery patch over that eye. His shoulder-armor seemed to be just as large as Slade's, but it was more noticeably curved downward, and the armor covering his lower-arms down to his wrists had protrusions that started just below his elbows and extended out over the backs of his hands.

His helmet was the strangest Cassie had seen on a Teknoman: instead of Slade's horns or Shara's sculpted curves, this new Teknoman had dark gray metal flares that looked a lot like dreadlocks.

Putting all of that aside, whether or not she would have the time to think about it later, Cassie focused on what the newly arrived Teknoman was actually _doing_. He seemed to be waiting for Slade; not that strange since she had heard the other Teknoman speak to him before, but a bit unnerving since Slade had talked about a strange voice that seemed to call to him, back when she had asked him about it earlier; when the two of them had been given a quiet moment during their search for Fenestre. So, having this new Teknoman here, even with him being as calm as he seemed to be right now, wasn't something that Cassie could really feel comfortable with.

(Slade, do you think you could ask him why he's here?) she asked, peering over the edge of Slade's armored collar as the forest-green Teknoman watched the battle between Slade and Fenestre.

_(All right.)_ There was a momentary pause, as Fenestre made an attempt to escape, reminding Cassie of just what the two of them had been doing before this new Teknoman had shown up and distracted her with worries about what Darkon might be planning. _(He says he's here to bring me back with him. He- he also mentioned someone called Darkon.)_

(What's wrong, Slade?) she asked, the more intimate nature of Slade and Shara's telepathy letting her catch the uneasiness that Slade was feeling.

_(It's just… I feel like I should _know_ that name, for some reason. Like it's something I've forgotten, but I shouldn't have. Like it's important to me, somehow,)_ Slade said, even as he pinned Fenestre to the floor of his underground compound, like a bug that could easily be squashed underfoot.

It was starting to look like Fenestre was actually the lesser of two evils in this situation; yes, the Yeerk was evil beyond anyone Cassie had ever had the displeasure of meeting in her life, but to let Darkon get his hands on Slade again – particularly given everything he knew about the Animorphs and their battle against the Yeerks – would doom the Earth and everyone on it to slavery under a creature that made even _Visser Three_ look preferable in comparison. Still, just because there was a greater threat present with them here and now, that didn't mean that she was willing to just let Fenestre's crimes go unpunished.

His victims deserved better than that.

(Slade, kill Fenestre and then get as far away from here as you can,) she said, pausing for a moment to consider what else to say. (And, from now on, try not to think about Darkon, all right?)

_(Right, Cassie,)_ Slade said, slamming his armored foot down on Fenestre's back with crushing force.

Cassie looked away just before she could see Fenestre's side's burst open from the pressure, just in time to see the forest-green Teknoman tilt his head slightly; there was an almost amused air about him, and for a moment Cassie wondered what kind of person could find amusement in another person's death.

"Well, _that_ was certainly anti-climactic," he said, then seemed to dismiss Fenestre's corpse entirely. "All right, Slade; you're obviously done with that guy, so-"

She didn't hear anything else, aside from the roar of what sounded uncannily like rockets; the halls they had been standing in passed in a blur afterward.


	56. Left unsaid

"-why don't you just run off again," he finished, as Slade's thrusters fired up and sent his fellow Teknoman blasting down the tunnel where the two of them had ended up facing each other.

With a last look at the crushed corpse on the floor, wondering for a moment who it was and what it had to do with Slade, Gunnar dismissed the thought from his mind and locked onto Slade's mental signature with his telepathic powers. Activating his own thrusters with a thought, Gunnar blasted down the hallway after Slade.

He might not have _liked_ what he was being forced to do here, but there was still the second part of that sentence that he had to keep in mind.

Bursting out through the hole that Slade had clearly made in the floor of the house they'd found each other under, Gunnar saw – and heard – the retreating form of his fellow Teknoman just turning a corner. Sighing, feeling both good and bad for the fact that Slade was still trying to keep himself free, Gunnar tailed him. Darkon wouldn't be pleased if he didn't at least have _something_ to report about Slade, but he'd have been lying if he said that he _wanted_ to carry out this mission.

The two of them soon stood outside of the dead man's house, Slade stopping and turning to face him. _So, you're going to fight me for your freedom, eh old friend?_ Gunnar mused, a morose smirk making its way onto his face. _Well, let it never be said that I didn't give you all the chances I didn't get._

Sure, there were few things that Gunnar wouldn't have given to _have_ those chances, but he'd long since realized that fate just wasn't that kind.

"Who are you?" Slade asked, at last; Gunnar chuckled softly.

_Well, I guess the memory-wipe took effect, just like Darkon planned it to._ He sighed, bringing out his bow; the Warlord was probably going to read his mind after this battle, so if he didn't get at least _some_ memories of open combat between the two of them, Gunnar was sure to suffer for it. And, knowing what he did about the Warlord's punishments, Gunnar wasn't about to let that happen.

Some things were just too much for any one person to handle.

"My name is Gunnar," he said, stepping closer to Slade as he felt the thrum of latent power in his Tekno-circuits in response to his bow. _Fight me, Slade; fight as hard as you can. I don't want to bring you back to Darkon with me; not now, not ever. So fight; live free, for all of us._ "I've been sent here to bring you back to Darkon, whether you like it or not."

There, now Slade wasn't likely to cooperate with him, and he could probably pull back under the coming assault with only a small reprimand from the Warlord for his failure. _Well, I can hope, at least._ Faint hope though Gunnar knew it was.

Slade's charge, coming as it did just a half-minute after Gunnar had finished speaking, was cause for a relieved smile from the Teknoman. It looked like Slade _did_ still have some fight left in him, even in spite of the mind-twisting influence that the Radam imposed on all of their Teknomen. Gunnar smiled, morose and pleased at once by the knowledge that – while his old friend Ness Carter might have been dead and gone – Teknoman Slade _wasn't_ about to roll over and accept Darkon's rule so easily.

It was a harsh kind of thing to be happy about, but considering the circumstances Gunnar was about as happy as he could be.

Firing a couple more of his explosive arrows, Gunnar happily dodged out of the way of Slade's teknolance as it came scything toward his head. The two of them slammed bodily into each other then, locking grips as they grappled, each attempting to force the other to heel. Gunnar's own combat-instincts, ingrained just as deeply into him as his new name, were beginning to get the better of him.

Still, he could see from the way Slade was beginning to move just that much faster, to attack just that much harder, that the same thing was happening to him; so Gunnar let his instincts surge. Ness had always been the better fighter than him, and as a Teknoman's combat-instincts could only work with what was there in the first place, there wasn't much of a chance of him beating Slade under any but the most unlikely of circumstances.

While Slade was attempting to shove him backward, though, Gunnar's gaze fell on something that _really_ shouldn't have been there; something that didn't belong on anyone's neck, much less a Teknoman's like him or Slade. Still, that slight lapse in attention cost him more than just his footing; Gunnar found himself being shoved almost straight backward, his armored feet digging trenches in the grass as Slade's superior strength bore down on him, and thrown into the side of the damaged house.

Rising from his supine position, where he'd been knocked when Slade had released his grip on Gunnar's hands, Gunnar grabbed a piece of debris from the caved-in wall and flung it at Slade's head. Now that his old friend was clearly getting into this fight, Gunnar knew that he would be facing Slade's full power; he'd have to put up more of a struggle if he wanted to get out of this alive.

If he _wanted_ to get out of it alive, anyway.

Shaking that thought off almost as soon as he'd had it – Gunnar still had _someone_ who cared about him, and Ulysses Carter still needed him to keep the man updated about what was going on in the outside world – Gunnar shoved his conflicted feelings, as well as the pure curiosity about just why in the hell Slade was wearing a _squirrel_ around his neck, aside and focused on what he was doing. Raising his bow to deflect a strike from Slade's lance, Gunnar was mildly surprised when Slade split the thing right down the middle and charged at him with both weapons bared.

His surprise, momentary though it was, just about cost Gunnar an eye when the strike he _hadn't_ been quick enough to block with his own – singular – weapon, slipped through his guard uncomfortably close to his face. Leaping backwards to give himself more room – good in a scrap as Fritz Wallace had been, Teknoman Gunnar was still a long-range fighter when you came right down to it – Gunnar brought his bow back up and charged one of his arrows.

Deliberately aiming for Slade's feet, not knowing just what the squirrel was there for but knowing his old friend well enough to know that Ness had always been extremely protective of what he had claimed for his own, Gunnar fired a short barrage of arrows and then leaped back again as Slade drove himself relentlessly forward.

Gunnar was beginning to have a bit of trouble with his instincts, now; being presented with such a clear, vulnerable target as that squirrel – something that was so clearly important to Slade that he felt compelled not only to bring it into battle with him, but to keep it actually _on_ him while he fought – was nearly more than he could take. Vulnerable targets were meant to be attacked, according to the Radam's doctrine, and he was one of the Radam; as much as he tried to resist it, Gunnar still knew that it was true.

Teknoman Gunnar knew that, no matter how he tried to present himself, he would never be Fritz Wallace again.


	57. To Each His Own Resolution

The terror that her squirrel morph habitually felt, the terror of a small animal who spent their entire life surrounded by predators who wanted to eat them, was multiplied to an almost insanely high amount as Cassie continued to cling to Slade's collar- and neck-armor as he fought that other Teknoman. It wasn't just being surrounded by Slade's smell, the alien, _dangerous _scent that Cassie was still trying to figure out. It was also the things that no squirrel before her had ever had a point of reference for: the explosions caused by Gunnar's arrows would startle the human half of her mind, and then her squirrel half would pick up on that uneasiness and go further into the state of almost abject panic that she had been dealing with since even _before_ Gunnar had showed up.

It wasn't a good situation; combined with her need to demorph before she was forced to spend the rest of her life as a squirrel, and the uneasiness that _that_ knowledge brought up for her, and Cassie found that her squirrel mind was almost insane with terror.

(Slade, I need you to get me somewhere safe,) Cassie said, almost hyperventilating from the sheer, unthinking terror that was pressing down on her from the squirrel that was sharing space with her own mind. (I need to change morphs.) _Before I do something stupid, like try to demorph right on your neck._

Only the thought of how stupidly dangerous doing something like that would be – not just because of the fact that Slade was currently locked in battle with Gunnar, but because the tight spaces between his collar- and neck-armor were more than likely to crush her if she tried – kept Cassie from getting desperate enough to try. The squirrel's heart was hammering out of sheer fright, and Cassie was sure that that kind of thing wasn't healthy for either of them.

She didn't know just what kind of a morph would be able to survive combat with a pair of Teknomen – aside from the obvious, which Cassie didn't feel right about using without Shara's permission – but she knew that she couldn't stay in her current morph without risking either getting trapped, or even getting killed, either by a stray shot that was extremely unlucky or the squirrel morph's own fear.

(Slade, did you hear me?) she asked, as the clang and crash of alien steel continued unabated over her head.

_(Did you say something, Cassie?)_ Slade asked, even as he parried a stab from the strange combination of bow and sword that seemed to be Gunnar's main weapon; the same way that that serrated lance was his.

(Slade, I need to get out of this squirrel morph, right now,) she said, putting all of the urgency that she felt into her voice, hoping that Slade would get the idea even if he _was_ distracted by the fight with Gunnar. (It's panicking, and I don't know how long I can keep it under control in these kinds of conditions.)

_(Right,)_ Slade said, still sounding distracted by something, but also like he was making an effort to think of other things. _(I'll try to get us out of here.)_

Cassie didn't need Slade's obvious uncertainty about the situation to tell her just how difficult something like that was probably going to be. Gunnar was right in front of him, and the other Teknoman had made it more than obvious just whose side he was on. And, even if her current morph _wasn't_ an issue, Cassie would have still felt uneasy about the whole situation.

This was still a Teknoman that they were facing, and while she might not have known everything that those kind of people were capable of, anyone could see that they were dangerous.

As Slade tried to pull back, backing down under Gunnar's assault even though she could tell that he didn't strictly _want_ to, Cassie began to see that the forest-green Teknoman seemed to be aware of something else going on. Maybe he wasn't yet aware of her precisely, but the slight hesitance in the other Teknoman's movements suggested that he was starting to think more deeply about _something_.

"Why are you running away, Slade? Are you _afraid_ of me?" Gunnar asked, sounding like he was either curious or slightly amused; although, given his choice of words, it might have easily been both.

Slade didn't answer, instead falling back toward the remains of Fenestre's demolished house.

(Slade, are you all right?) she asked, having felt the rising tension coming from Slade's mind as he continued trying to duck and evade Gunnar's attacks rather than responding to them the way he'd been doing for most of his battle with the other Teknoman.

_(I need to get you out of sight,)_ Slade said, the tension that he was feeling – the struggle _not_ to respond to Gunnar's probing attacks with superior force as his instincts demanded of him – seeping even more strongly into Cassie's own mind as she "heard" his telepathic message. _(You're weak; he'd kill you without even breathing hard. I can't allow that.)_

When Slade had said the last part of his sentence, Cassie had become aware of another set of instinctive instructions that he was responding to, above and beyond even the directive to fight that he had been obeying up until she had managed to get his attention: to obey those superior to him in the hierarchy that the Radam's mental tampering had imprinted him to recognize.

That, she realized then, was why Slade was always so quick to follow the orders that Jake gave to them, and why he hadn't questioned her when she had requested his assistance on this particular mission: as far as he was concerned, it hadn't _been_ a request. She had basically given him one more in a long line of orders that he – as an Enforcer Teknoman – was instinctively inclined to obey.

It wasn't a nice thing to think about, the fact that Slade had basically given his initiative to the two of them – letting her and Jake, ultimately, decide what he was and wasn't going to do – and Cassie wondered for a moment if there was any way for her to help him to be more independent in the future.

Now wasn't the time to think about things like that, though; not with Gunnar attacking, and her needing to change morphs just to get away from the squirrel's sheer, blind terror about what was going on all around it. Now, they only had the time to think about the fact that she needed to get out of her current morph, and quickly.

Exploding arrows rained down all around them, even as Slade kept moving backwards into the remains of Fenestre's house, and Cassie struggled to control the panic of the squirrel's mind. Taking a chance, Cassie popped her head up from the safety of Slade's armored collar. She could see that they were moving closer to the remains of Fenestre's house, as pitiful a shelter as it seemed in light of the power that Gunnar was bringing to bear against them.

(Thanks, Slade,) she said, knowing as few other people could know what kind of a struggle he was going through concerning the instinctive response of a Teknoman to any kind of fight.

There was no answer from Slade, but Cassie hadn't really been expecting one in the first place; there were just too many things for Slade to think about, first and foremost the fact that Gunnar was still coming after them.

The wall that Slade had managed to put between himself and Gunnar was riddled with explosive arrows then, coming apart in a spectacular detonation that forced Cassie to duck back beneath the relative safety of Slade's collar armor, leaving her only the V-shaped space between the two plates to peek out of. Through that space, she could watch as her view of the house changed as Slade whipped around, turning on his heel and making his way deeper inside in an effort to find some place where he could safely pause, even if only for a few moments.

Gunnar, however, was completely relentless in his efforts to run Slade into the ground; to bring the friend Cassie was just getting to know as a person back to Darkon so that he could be transformed into the weapon that Gunnar so clearly thought of himself as.

(Slade, the next clear space you see, I want you to throw me as hard as you can,) she said, knowing that her light squirrel body and long tail would be able to diffuse the impact; it was becoming all too obvious to her that Gunnar wasn't going to stop pressing Slade long enough for him to stop and find a safe place to set her down. (Then, get Gunnar out of this place before he brings it down on _both_ our heads.)

_(Right, Cassie,)_ Slade responded, and seconds later Cassie found herself flying through the air.

Using her tail to right herself as she fell, Cassie slammed into one of the mostly-intact walls of Fenestre's house with a bit more momentum than she'd ever thought that a squirrel could actually _have_. Crouching to lessen the force of the impact, Cassie breathed deeply once and then scampered down the wall and back onto the floor. She could still hear the sounds of Slade and Gunnar fighting: crashes, yells, and the occasional explosion or sound of walls being battered down, but the sounds were far enough away that Cassie felt that she could safely shut them out for at least long enough to demorph and then remorph.

Pushing the sounds of inhuman violence – caused by inhuman combatants – out of her mind for the moment, Cassie focused once again on her own, human body. As the ground seemed to fall away from her, Cassie noticed that she could not only hear but _feel_ the subtle rumbles of open, Teknoman-on-Teknoman combat as they reverberated through the floor underneath her. As the last of the heart-freezing panic of her squirrel morph evaporated from her mind with the morph's own, Cassie took a moment to relax as much as she could under the circumstances.

It wasn't all that much, considering what she was not only hearing but also feeling, but it wouldn't have done her any good to just keep panicking in that tiny, helpless body she had been inhabiting; even if Slade's collar armor _had_ been the safest place for her, which under the circumstances it probably had been, squirrels weren't really known for being reasonable.

Just as she was regaining her composure in preparation to start morphing again, Cassie felt someone else's eyes on her. Opening her own eyes, she found the single worst thing that she could have thought of, under the circumstances: Gunnar was standing there, staring directly at her.

He cut an imposing figure; his forest-green armor looked almost black with the lack of working lights inside Fenestre's broken-down house, his silver facemask caught a stray beam of light and seemed to gain a sinister shine, something that was only added to by the subtle, evil red glow of his visible left eye. Cassie found herself almost frozen in place by his presence, unable to make even the slightest move while that eye and his concealed right one fixed her in their gaze.

Slade's presence had seemed to make her feel slightly more confident when she'd been facing him this way, but looking at Gunnar, Cassie wondered if that had only been because Slade had been on their side.

Before she was given too long to muse on the differences between Slade's presence and that of Gunnar, the very person she'd been thinking of rammed into the other Teknoman lance-first. Slade bore down on Gunnar like a rushing train, slamming the evil Teknoman back through one of the already-damaged walls of Fenestre's half-destroyed house.

Finally feeling like she could breathe again, without the oppressive weight of Gunnar's presence bearing down on her, Cassie concentrated on her owl morph after only a few moments of thought. She needed something with mobility, something that would be able to keep up with the running battle between Slade and Gunnar no matter where it shifted to, but at the same time she needed a morph that wouldn't be too much at risk of getting caught in the crossfire between the two Teknomen as they fought.

The owl morph would be best for that kind of thing, considering the lateness of the hour; and at least she would still be able to see what was going on between Slade and Gunnar with the owl's superior night-vision.

Fixing her morph in her mind, blocking out the sounds of continuing violence as the battle between Slade and Gunnar wore on, Cassie felt her body begin to change. Breathing slowly and steadily in an effort to calm herself down after the events of this particularly eventful night, Cassie opened her owl eyes and made a running take-off into the air. Circling to gain altitude in the large room that she found herself in – made all the larger with two of the interior walls almost leveled by the fighting, as well as the large hole that Slade had punched in the outside wall – Cassie flew out through the hole that Gunnar had been unceremoniously thrown through, and began searching for her fellow Animorph.

She didn't have to look long: Slade and Gunnar, lances out and sparking slightly as they ground against one another, were just a few feet outside the remains of Fenestre's house. There were small trenches behind both of them, clearly having been dug out of the turf by the armored feet of both Teknomen as they continued to grapple with each other.

Cassie was just about to ask Slade if he was all right, but she quickly thought better of it when Slade hopped slightly backwards, breaking the deadlock between himself and Gunnar, then rushed forward with a series of cuts, stabs, and thrusts that were nearly too fast for Cassie to keep up with. Gunnar, however, could clearly not just keep up with Slade, but also fight back just as well as his fellow Teknoman.

It seemed like the battle, having ripped through the remains of Fenestre's gutted house and caused what remained of his guards to either run for their lives or be slaughtered, was going to end up being a stalemate. As much as Cassie wouldn't have believed that anything could have stood up to Slade in his armor after what she had seen him do in their earlier battles, now she was learning better.

If _this_ was the kind of power that a single Teknoman could bring to a fight, Cassie was more relieved than ever that Slade and Shara were on their side.

Watching as Slade slammed his right foot into Gunnar's face, staggering the other Teknoman long enough for Slade to make three, large, rocket-assisted jumps backwards, Cassie wondered just what her fellow Animorph was planning. As the red parts of his shoulder-armor rose up, revealing themselves to be not only hinged but concealing something that Cassie couldn't quite see from her current angle, Cassie wondered what was happening. It definitely looked like Slade was about to do something different, but _what_ it was still remained to be seen.


	58. Sentiment

As Slade's pauldrons opened to reveal his fellow Teknoman's energy-condensers, Gunnar could barely restrain himself from letting loose with an incredulous laugh. There was no way in hell that Darkon would ever expect him to get up after being hit point-blank with a Tekno-bolt. _Survive_ it, sure; the Warlord would be expecting him to live, and to report back after he had recovered. But to take Slade in, _after_ he'd been pounded by the single, strongest attack that any Teknoman had in their arsenal?

No, not even Darkon would be so arrogant.

So, when the burning energies of Slade's Tekno-bolt hammered him, driving Gunnar back with the sheer pressure that they exerted and making him feel like he was being slow-roasted inside his own armor, Gunnar held out his arms and laughed. _Well, old friend, I guess that settles it; you've won your freedom._

Still, even as Slade's Tekno-bolt expended the last of its energy and faded out, leaving Gunnar to fall to the ground on his back – still laughing softly, tears in his eyes as he stared up at the stars – he knew that this wasn't the end of things. He wasn't stupid; there was no way in hell that Darkon was going to just leave Slade alone once he'd gotten concrete proof – second-hand though it might have been – of how strong Gunnar's fellow Teknoman was.

It was already a truism that freedom wasn't exactly free, but in Slade's case that was going to be more than just a saying. Gunnar found that he couldn't really care about something like that; as far as _he_ was concerned, Slade had already proved just how determined he was to remain free of Darkon and the rest of the Radam Empire. It would probably have seemed like a cold comfort to anyone else, but now that he knew that his old friend was fully willing to fight to defend the freedom that Gunnar could only wish for under his current circumstances, he actually felt better about things.

Rolling back to his knees, turning to survey the damage that Slade's Tekno-bolt had done to the landscape, Gunnar found that he couldn't quite stop himself from chuckling, even as he wiped the remaining tears from his eyes.

Taking the time to bury his secret thoughts in the depths of his mind, clearing his consciousness of anything radical enough to attract Darkon's attention in the wrong ways, Gunnar rolled back to his feet, transformed once more, and activated his thrusters in preparation for the long journey back to the place that he would never call home.

XXX

As she and Slade flew back to the barn, both in the owl morphs that she had suggested that he and Shara acquire for times like this, Cassie thought back to the explosion of green-white light that had come streaming out of both his shoulders during the end of Slade's battle with Gunnar; the thing that had actually _ended_ his battle with Gunnar, in fact.

(Slade, what in the world _was_ that?) she asked, her mind still filled with the image of the light that had come blasting out of Slade's shoulders, and the damage that it had done to the remains of Fenestre's house.

_(It's called a Tekno-bolt,)_ Slade said, sounding more exhausted than she had ever heard anyone sound before; given what he had just done, though, Cassie found that she could completely understand. _(I can only use it once every time I transform, though.)_

(I can see why,) she said earnestly, shifting her flightpath so she and Slade were closer to each other; there weren't bird watchers at night, and Slade definitely sounded like he could use the support. (I'll bring you some food when we get back to my house,) she said, after about a minute of thinking.

_(Thanks,)_ Slade said, and could almost _feel_ the exhaustion that was dragging him down, but she was also aware of Slade's own determination to push past it.

It was almost like when any one of them had been forced to fight, then had to morph when they were nearly at the end of their endurance; it was that same determination that carried them all through.

The rest of their flight was in silence, no words exchanged between the two of them as they made their way back to her house, and the barn where Slade and his sister were staying. Even as she tried not to think about what could have happened, Cassie knew that the mental image of Gunnar, standing before her in the darkened remains of Fenestre's house, evil red eyes fixed on her, was going to stay with her for a very long time.

She might not have known just what Gunnar would have _done_ to her if Slade hadn't gotten to him before he could make a move, but since Gunnar was one of the Radam, she knew that it couldn't have been anything good. She was glad not to have had to find out.

Finally finding herself staring down at the familiar form of her family's home, Cassie folded her wings and dropped into a dive. (Slade, follow me.)

_(Right,)_ the Teknoman – her friend – said, and out of the corner of her right eye she could see Slade folding his wings and dropping out of the air just behind her.

She was going to let Slade eat in the kitchen this time; both because both of her parents would be asleep at this time of night, and because there wasn't much of a chance of her getting him to wait in the barn with how tired he obviously was. At least, not without Slade falling asleep before he could actually _eat_ anything.

She could only be thankful that it _was_ the middle of the night; she'd have never been able to take this kind of risk, otherwise.

Landing just outside the kitchen window, Cassie demorphed quickly and slid it open, thankful for the fact that – while there _were_ locks on the windows – no one ever bothered to use them. Letting Slade flutter in through the window, holding the screen up and out of his way, Cassie replaced the screen as quickly as she could while still being as quiet as she was able to manage.

Cassie could hear Slade demorphing behind her as she made her way over to the refrigerator, and when she turned to look back over her shoulder at him, she found that his softly glowing green eyes were focused on her. "Go sit down at the table," she whispered, quietly enough that she almost couldn't hear herself talk.

_(Right,)_ Slade responded easily, his eyes flashing briefly when he used his telepathy.

Even after having seen it so many times, every day that she would deliver the siblings' meals to them at the beginning and end of the day, it was still a strange thing for Cassie to look at. She also didn't usually pay it that much attention when she saw it in the mornings, too focused on what she was going to be doing during the rest of the day. But, here and now with nothing else to focus on, Cassie realized again just how different Slade – and Shara, since she was just the same kind of being – was from any of the Animorphs.

Just how different the Radam had made them.

Looking back at Slade as she dug into the refrigerator, she found that he was slumped down at the table, folding his arms so that he could rest his head on them. Sighing as she turned back to the food that she was getting for him, Cassie finally settled on a tub of macaroni and cheese that she thought might be large enough to satisfy Slade's hunger before he went to sleep.

Closing the refrigerator after she had gotten a spoon, Cassie made her way over to the table where Slade had been sitting. Pausing for a few moments, looking down at her friend and fellow Animorph as he continued to breathe quietly, his head resting on his folded arms, Cassie sighed. She was starting to have second thoughts; not about what she had done to Fenestre, since anyone who had been there to hear what he was doing to the people he'd lied and said he was trying to help would have understood that he had to die, but about what she had asked Slade to do.

Seeing him like this, so weak and tired after he'd done everything he could to help her just because he'd thought that that was what he was _supposed_ to do, made Cassie feel like she should apologize to him. He'd only ended up this way because she had asked him to come with her; because she had asked him to transform, and then given Darkon a way to track him down. It was really _her_ fault that Gunnar had found the two of them.

She didn't like the way that that made her feel, but that didn't mean that it was any less true.

Reaching out, she gave Slade's right arm a gentle shake, letting go to pull the lid off of the macaroni and cheese container that she had brought out for him to eat. Slade's first few moments of consciousness were a bit hectic: Slade's head whipping around in startlement before his subtly glowing green eyes fixed on her.

"Here," she whispered as low as she could, gesturing at the open container of macaroni and cheese that she had placed in front of him.

Slade grabbed it without hesitation, digging in with the kind of gusto that she hadn't seen in anyone else but his sister. Briefly, Cassie felt guilty for the fact that she hadn't been able to find him anything more healthy, or at the very least more tasty, than the leftover macaroni and cheese that her dad had fixed and then probably forgotten about the way he always seemed to do. Slade ate every bite, though, just the way she had been expecting that he would. He never seemed to mind what she brought him; unlike Shara, who while polite would always let Cassie know what she preferred in regards to meals.

Cassie found herself wondering, not for the first time, just what kind of person Slade had been before the Radam had gotten their hooks into him; she knew from Jake that his name had been Ness Carter, but that didn't really tell her anything _about_ him.

Once Slade had finished his meal, Cassie took the empty container and the spoon that he had used over to the sink so she could soak them. Her dad was the one that usually did the dishes, and he didn't pay too much attention to the dishes that were already _in_ the sink. That was good, since Cassie wasn't really eager to start having to tell half-truths about what she was or wasn't eating. Slade seemed kind of drowsy after he finished his meal, so Cassie knew that she would have to get him out of her family's kitchen before he could start dozing off again.

"Come on," she whispered, taking his hand and pulling him away from the table before he could really start settling down. "Let's go."

_(Yes, Cassie,)_ Slade said, letting her lead him out of her house and back to the barn where he and Shara slept.

As she made her way across the darkened grounds of her family's property, Cassie was briefly tempted to go just enough into the morph that she had acquired from Shara that her eyes would be able to see through the darkness as well as Slade's could right now. Still, she hadn't asked the other girl's permission to use her body for things like this. Besides, she could see well enough to at least get Slade into the barn, if nothing else.

Slade opened the barn door before Cassie herself could even reach out, and she thanked him softly. The interior of the barn was too dark for her to navigate in without partially morphing Shara, and since she hadn't asked permission from the other girl to do that, she wasn't going to.

Thanking Slade as the two of them parted ways at the barn, Cassie made her way back into her house. She felt almost as tired as Slade had seemed, now, but she'd known that it was important to get Slade out of her house before he fell asleep. She knew better than to think that she would be able to carry him out of the barn, at least without resorting to the morph that she wasn't going to use.

Yawning deeply, Cassie made her way back up the stairs to her room. She took a brief moment to be thankful that her house didn't have any creaking stairs or things like that; these times, when she was so tired that she knew that there wasn't much besides pure willpower keeping her legs moving, Cassie was glad that she didn't have to worry about being careful where she stepped on top of that.

Making her way back into her room, feeling more exhausted than she could readily remember, Cassie closed her door softly and made her way over to her bed. Stopping briefly to close her window now that she wasn't waiting to meet with anyone, Cassie shucked her morphing outfit and tossed it down by the head of her bed. She'd have to change it soon, but that could wait at least another day.

Wrapping herself in the blankets that she had abandoned for her meeting with Slade, Cassie closed her eyes and let herself relax for the first time that night.


	59. Unfinished

The next day, just as she was getting ready to head down for breakfast, Cassie realized that she couldn't just leave things the way they were. Fenestre might have been dead, but that didn't mean that the other Controllers who might have found out about that chat room wouldn't take their chance to act against the people who had found out about them.

She might not have been able to save everyone, but that wouldn't stop her from doing everything she could.

Making her way down to the kitchen, Cassie took a deep breath; this was going to take a lot of the acting skills that she had developed over her time working with the other Animorphs. As much as she might not have liked lying to her parents, some things had to be done.

In the end, things turned out to be easier than she thought; her dad was a bit preoccupied by something else, so when she told him that she wasn't feeling well, all he did was tell her to go back to bed. She thanked him for his concern and made her way back up the stairs. Cassie couldn't help but feel guiltily grateful that her dad didn't feel up to looking too closely at why she wasn't feeling up to going to school today.

She didn't know just what she would have said to her dad if he'd paid more attention to her; it would have just been one more lie in the long line of them that she'd had to tell because of what they were all doing, but even the fact that Cassie could think of it that way made her feel like she was _actually_ going to be sick.

When she made it back to her room, Cassie had barely climbed back into her bed when she remembered that she had forgotten to bring Slade and Shara their breakfast this morning. Sitting up, Cassie looked toward her bedroom door, just as her father opened it.

"I'm sorry, dad," she said, feeling all the more regretful for the fact that she had had to lie in the first place. "I forgot that I have to feed the animals."

"Why don't you let me handle that, Cassie?" her dad asked.

Smiling, trying not to show any of the uncertainty that she felt; knowing that there was no way that she could ever hope to persuade her dad to let her go out to the barn, at least not without making him suspicious about her not feeling well enough to go the school today, Cassie settled back into her bed.

"Thanks, dad," she said, smiling and trying to sound relived. "I guess I've just been working myself a bit too hard, lately."

"Yeah, you seem fairly tired this morning," her dad said, making his way over to her bedside. "I think you should just take it easy, today; I'll call Rachel and see if she can pick up your homework for you."

"Thanks, dad," she repeated, smiling.

"I want you to promise me that you'll take better care of yourself from now on, Cassie," her dad said, looking down at her earnestly.

"I will, Dad," she said; even as she said it, Cassie knew that she wouldn't be able to keep that kind of a promise.

Not with the Yeerks invading, and not with the threat of the Radam hovering just on the horizon. She didn't like that thought any more now than she ever had, but that didn't make it any less true.

"Get some rest, Cassie."

"Yeah," she said, laying back down in her bed. "Thanks again, Dad."

"Of course, Cassie," he said, smiling as he turned to leave her room.

Pulling her blankets up, Cassie watched her dad leave the room. Then, closing her eyes, she focused on a morph that she had promised herself that she wouldn't use. She _still_ wasn't going to use it, not really, but she needed the powers that she would only have access to if she morphed. Since Cassie wasn't going to take the chance of her dad walking back into her room and seeing her in some kind of half-animal morph while she was trying to communicate with Slade and Shara.

She would only need the telepathic powers that Shara had demonstrated on so many occasions; she would only need to morph just enough that she could use them. Cassie was fairly sure that Shara wouldn't mind.

_(Shara, could you let Slade know that I won't be able to get you two any food until around lunch time?)_ she projected, closing her eyes just in case her own glowed the way Shara's and Slade's always did when either of them spoke telepathically.

_(I don't think that's really the best idea, Cassie,)_ Shara responded, after only a few moments of mental silence. _(If Slade doesn't get at least _some_ food before he and I sleep, I'm fairly sure he's going to end up doing something drastic.)_

_(What do you mean, Shara?)_ she asked, having sensed Shara's apprehension in the same way that she had always been able to catch brief glimpses of Slade's emotions when _he_ spoke to her telepathically.

_(There are a lot of helpless animals in the barn, Cassie,)_ Shara said, seeming a bit squeamish about whatever it was that she was trying to say. _(Normally, I don't think Slade would bother them, but if he's hungry enough… I don't think it would matter to him if they were cooked or not.)_

Cassie winced; sure, Slade would probably leave the animals alone if she asked him to – no matter _how_ hungry he got – but Cassie didn't want any of her friends, even someone as strange and borderline-frightening as Slade, to be uncomfortable if there was something she could do about it.

_(That's… Well, I won't say it's _good_, but at least it's good to know,)_ she said, settling back for a moment to consider just what it was that she was actually going to be able to _do_ about that. There was one thing, but… _(Shara, would you mind if I morphed you, just this once?)_

There was a bit of a longer mental silence than any that had come before, but when Shara answered she seemed kind of amused. _(Yeah; I think I can guess what you're planning. Go ahead.)_

_(Thank you, Shara,)_ she said, letting out a breath that she hadn't quite been aware of holding up until that point.

_(If you're really planning to morph me completely, then there's something you'll want to know,)_ Shara said. _(Invisibility doesn't quite cover everything, at least with people who know their surroundings.)_

_(Oh, I never thought of that,)_ she said; it made sense, though.

Just because you were invisible, that didn't stop people from being able to hear you, or to find your footprints in the grass.

_(Thanks, Shara,)_ she said, fully demorphing even as she had finished speaking.

She didn't know if it was possible for someone to become trapped in a partial morph, but Cassie wasn't at all eager to find out.

XXX

The next day found Jake feeling pretty much the same as when he and Cassie had split off to head to for their respective homes after the debacle with Mr. Fenestre and his Yeerk. His mom had made at least _some_ effort to make him feel better, but since she could only speculate on what was affecting him – and since both his parents seemed fixated on the idea that all of his problems essentially came down to his being a teenager – it fell pretty flat from the beginning.

They didn't, and couldn't ever, know what it was like for him to have to be the one making life-and-death decisions; to continue making those kinds of decisions even after he'd made so many mistakes during his time, to be the leader of the only real chance that Earth had of resisting the Yeerks. To at least _try_ to anticipate just where and when the Radam were going to strike first. To know that, even with Slade and Shara on their side, there wasn't anything the Animorphs could really do if the Radam decided to attack directly.

Between periods, Jake did his best to find Cassie. The two of them hadn't parted on the best of terms, and he didn't want to have that kind of thing between them for any longer than he absolutely had to.

It didn't take him too long to realize that Cassie wasn't anywhere in school; Jake realized that he knew just where it was that she had gone.

Making his way to the school's roof, always careful to keep an eye out for teachers or hall-monitors who might wonder just what it was that he was doing. Any of them might have been a Controller and, in their case, appearances were far more important than people might have thought. Finally setting foot on the roof, Jake made sure he was out of sight of anyone who might be on the grounds watching him, and then began stripping down to his morphing outfit. Tucking his clothes out of sight, somewhere where he would be able to find them but also where they would be out of sight to anyone who wasn't actually looking for them, he began at last to morph.

A running take-off got him into the air, still not particularly happy with the way that things had gone today but knowing that there wasn't really anything he could do about it under the circumstances, and Jake powered his new wings to bring himself up into the air. He wasted a bit of time searching out the address that they had discovered for Gump, before realizing that Cassie would have been more careful than that. For all of her sentiment, Cassie wasn't one to be reckless with their lives, he knew.

With that in mind, Jake turned away from the house where Gump and his Controller father lived. Looking for the nearest elementary school, knowing that that was most likely where Gump was at this time of day, Jake had soon found the place and was on his way there. He knew that that was his best chance of finding Gump, and with him, Cassie.

The kids were all at recess when he found them, but one of them – a little boy – was off on his own at the far edge of the playground. There was a large dog with him; or, that was what anyone else who had come across this particular scene would have thought. Jake, knowing animals – knowing _Cassie_ – as well as he did, recognized her wolf morph as soon as he'd seen it.

As Jake watched, safely out of sight of anyone who didn't have a good pair of binoculars, the little boy patted the wolf on the head, then turned away to join the rest of his classmates as they left the playground. The wolf watched him go, lingering for a few moments, then turned away. Leaping the chain-link fence in one smooth, easy motion, the wolf that he knew was Cassie faded into a large stand of trees near the school.

(Cassie.)

XXX

She was almost surprised to hear Jake's voice calling out to her, even in spite of the fact that she had suspected that he wouldn't be particularly happy with her for skipping class the way she'd done. The way she'd had to do, to try to help at least one of the people who Fenestre had put in danger with his own selfishness and evil. To make up for the way she had manipulated Slade into killing him last night.

Jake began demorphing at almost the same time as Cassie herself did, but she still managed to regain her human form before he had done likewise. Taking a breath and letting it out slowly, she watched Jake regain his own human form with a melancholy sort of feeling. She knew that he wasn't going to happy with her for this, but it was something that she'd had to do.

She had to do it, if she was going to be able to live with herself after what she'd done last night.

"That was Gump, I guess," Jake said, after a moment of just looking at her, in that way he did when he was trying to figure out what she was thinking.

"Yeah." Standing here now, facing Jake, made Cassie feel even worse about what she had done last night.

She'd been so sure that she'd been in the right at that moment, and while she couldn't ever bring herself to regret what she had done to Fenestre – couldn't ever make herself believe that _he_ had deserved to live – she'd still gone behind Jake's back. She'd still manipulated Slade, when it came right down to it. And, even though she didn't know if he'd seen anything too damaging, she'd still exposed herself to Darkon's Teknoman.

She didn't know what Gunnar would _do_ with that information, and that was really the worst part: she didn't know how much she should worry, so she tried to make up for it by worrying as much as possible. "Yeah, that was him."

Jake paused for a few long moments, clearly thinking about something, but whatever he was thinking about didn't show on his face; Jake was getting better about not showing what he really thought, Cassie reflected sadly. "What did you tell him?"

"I told him that I was a magic, talking wolf," Cassie said, forcing her attention back to what she'd been doing today; it would be too much to dump on Jake all at once if she started talking about what was _really_ bothering her. "He didn't exactly buy that, I don't think. I guess, by his age kids are pretty much past the point where they believe in magic."

"Yeah, I guess so," Jake allowed, still looking like he was trying to figure her out; Cassie wondered how he was doing.

"I told him not to go back to that chat room again," she said. Still, while she was talking to Jake about what she had said to Gump, all Cassie could see was Slade. The way he hadn't even objected to what she had asked him to do. "I told him…" _the flash of an armored foot slamming down; blood all over the walls._ "I told him not to talk to his father about Yeerks." _An armored figure, looming out of the darkness and glaring down at her with evil, red eyes._ "I told him…" _Snarls, a laughing, taunting voice over the clash of blades._ "I told that little boy not to trust his own father," she muttered, not really hearing herself anymore.

She'd told Slade to kill someone, last night in Fenestre's house; he'd done it, true, but she shouldn't have even _suggested_ something so drastic in the first place. Knowing what she knew about Slade, how his mind worked – or didn't – after the Radam had finished with him, she shouldn't have asked for _anything_ like that. "I shouldn't have done that."

"It was the best you _could_ do," Jake said, startling Cassie, until she remembered that she hadn't mentioned Slade at all during the course of their conversation. "It was… kind of all you could do, I guess. I mean, I guess it's hard to fight evil without doing some of your own, along the way."

"Maybe," she muttered, leaning against him for a long moment.

He was really a better person than she was; _he_ hadn't used what he knew about a person that he called a friend to get them to do something horrible. Jake wrapped his left arm around her shoulders, and the two of them stood together for a few moments. She didn't feel better at the end, but Cassie at least felt like she could face the rest of the day without too much trouble.

Without hating herself _too_ much for what she'd done to Slade, even though she knew that he wouldn't – he _couldn't_ – hold it against her.


	60. Distant Contemplation

Cassie had seemed distracted, while the two of them were talking, but as he watched her walk away, Jake knew that he wouldn't be able to find the words to talk to her about any of it. Anyone who knew the both of them would have to know that Cassie was better with words than he would ever be. It helped that she could understand people, he knew.

He wasn't much good with that, either.

Remorphing into his falcon body, Jake took off and made his way back to their school. He couldn't help thinking back to the way that Cassie had looked when she was talking to him about what she felt she had done to Gump and his family. She'd seemed to be a million miles away; like she was thinking about something else.

Still, maybe she'd just felt worse about the whole issue of Gump than she'd been willing to admit.

Landing back on the roof of their school, Jake demorphed quickly, pulled his clothes back on, and made his way back down to the schoolyard proper. Looking around, making sure that there was no one nearby – or anyone paying too much attention to him – Jake smoothly rejoined the mass of students as they made their way back to class.

He wasn't going to count on getting away with skipping half a class the way he'd done, but he'd dealt with far worse consequences from his many decisions than just having to stay after school for a bit longer.

After school had ended for the day, Jake let his attention wander as his mother drove him and Tom home. He couldn't let himself think about the fact that he was essentially sitting with the enemy, and anything else wasn't really important in the grand scheme of things, so Jake compromised by trying not to think about anything. The shortness of the ride was something to be thankful for, since it let Jake get out of the car and away from the thing that used to be his older brother.

Tom still was, but if Jake let himself think about the full implications of that, he knew that it would only make him angry.

When the three of them – his mom had never been a fan of the concept – settled down in front of the TV, Jake tried to make himself relax. He tried not to think about Cassie, and just how bad she had clearly been feeling when the two of them left each other behind. The story that came on the news blew those thoughts right out of his head, but unfortunately it put a whole new set of worries in their place.

Fenestre's mansion had been gutted, ripped apart by what seemed like some kind of a wide-angled beam. He'd have thought it was from Visser Three, or some other Yeerk that Fenestre had offended, but something about the trenches that had been dug into the ground, something about the holes in the rubble, made him doubt that conclusion. It wasn't anything tangible, not something he could point out to someone who didn't know just what the damage from a Dracon beam looked like, but Jake knew that there was something about what he was seeing that was off.

Something that didn't fit.

Forced to put all of those thoughts aside when the newscast ended and his parents' attention was no longer distracted by it, Jake made a mental note to talk to the others about what he'd seen. Wishing for a moment that he'd thought to tape this broadcast, then realizing that he would have had to explain his desire to do so to the thing that was inhabiting Tom's head, Jake bit the inside of his cheek. His best hope of getting to see it again was to hope that Marco had taped this, the same way he himself had done before the mission where they'd found Ax out in the ocean.

_Wow, that almost feels like a lifetime ago,_ Jake mused.

"What's got you so happy, Midget?" the thing that was pretending to be Tom asked, jerking him back to the present.

"I was just thinking," he said, forcing himself to smirk. "You should really try it, sometime."

In the old days, before the Yeerks, before the secret war that the Animorphs were fighting had begun, Tom would have been all over him for that crack: he would have mercilessly noogied Jake, the two of them rolling around on the floor laughing, right up until their mom broke them up. They would have both gotten a stern, motherly lecture about roughhousing, all the while seeing their father's amused smirk and knowing that they weren't in any _real_ trouble.

It was just one more reminder of everything that was at stake in this war of theirs; one more reminder of why they had to win.


End file.
